■ . i ■ ;■ 



■ 



■H 



Wv.-'. 











Class. 
Book.. 



G)pyrigM°_ 



COEHUGHT DEPOSm 



BALZAC'S NOVELS. 

Translated by Miss K. P. Wormeley. 



Already Published: 
PEEE GORIOT. 
DTJCHESSE DE LANGEAIS. 
RISE AND FALL OF CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
EUGENIE GRANDET. 
COUSIN PONS. 
THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 
THE TWO BROTHERS. 
THE ALKAHEST. 
MODESTE MIGNON. 
THE MAGIC SKIN (Peau de Chagrin). 
COUSIN BETTE. 
LOUIS LAMBERT. 
BUREAUCRACY (Les Employes). 
SERAPHITA. 
SONS OF THE SOIL. 
FAME AND SORROW. 
THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
URSULA. 
AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY. 



ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 
BOSTON. 



) %/3 



A MEMOIR 



Honore de Balzac 



COMPILED AND WRITTEN BY 



EN BY 



KATHARINE PRESCOTT 'WORMELEY 







ROBERTS BROTHERS 

3 SOMERSET STREET 

BOSTON 

1892 



<* 



, 



Copyright, 1892, 

By Roberts Brothers. 

All rights reserved. , 



SEttf&ersttg press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. Introductory 1 

II. His Sister, Madame Surville's Narra- 
tive 5 

III. Childhood and Youth 47 

IV. His Sister's Narrative Continued . . 70 
V. Early Manhood 113 

VI. Literary Life 149 

VII. Judgment of Contemporary Friends . 192 

VIII. His Sister's Narrative Concluded . . 231 

IX. Retrospective 258 

X. Last Years 291 

Appendix 351 

Index 365 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



A Portrait of Balzac, taken one hour after 

DEATH, BY EuGENE GlRAUD Frontispiece 

Madame de Balzac considered this the best likeness of her 
husband ; she bequeathed it to her niece, Mine, de Saint- 
Yves, who allowed Lord Lytton to take a photograph of it. 
Lord Lytton, in turn, permitted the publisher of " Le Livre 
Moderne " to copy it, and it was first given to the world in 
that periodical, Sept. 10, 1891. 

A Sketch of the Prison of the College de 

Vendome 53 

Drawn from nature by A. Queyroy for Champfleury's 
pamphlet, " Balzac au College." 



HONOEE DE BALZAC. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

A complete life of Balzac cannot be written at the 
present time, and possibly never can be. The necessary 
documents either do not exist or the}' are not obtain- 
able. Unpublished letters and papers there are, in pos- 
session of the compatriot who best understood him and 
who ought to write his life, if it be ever written, — the 
Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoui ; but it is doubtful 
if even these papers will throw light on that inner self 
which Balzac's own will, aided by circumstances, with- 
drew from the knowledge of others. There are periods 
in his life when he disappears. Nearly the whole of 
what he was to himself, what his own being was, what 
were the influences that moulded it, how that eye that 
saw the manifold lives of others saw his own life, how 
that soul which crowned its earthly work with a vision 
of the Living Word was nurtured, — what that soul 
was, in short, has been concealed from sight. 

When he reappears, it is chiefly as he was seen and 

known by his literary friends and associates in Paris ; 

bearing up against the trials of a hard life with his 

heart} r Tourainean gayety, battling for his rights with 

1 



2 Honore de Balzac. 

editors and publishers, and letting the reaction from his 
heavy toil and from the inward stress of his spirit have 
full swing in the eccentric joviality which was a phase 
of his nature. This is almost the sole aspect under 
which the man, taken apart from his work, has been 
made known to the world. The men who saw him 
thus, his literary associates, had the ear of the public, 
and to this day their books and publications, with two 
or three exceptions, remain, not false perhaps, but mis- 
leading, — so misleading that they have concealed the 
real man and have forced us to look at the feet of the 
statue, not suffering us to see its head. Unfortunately, 
they are the text-books from which the present gener- 
ation of writers and readers derive their ideas of Balzac 
in his manhood. 

Of his childhood and early youth his sister Laure, 
Madame Surville, has written a charmingly sincere and 
simple narrative. If read in connection with the parts 
of Balzac's books which are derived from that period of 
his life, a sufficient idea of him as child and } T outh will 
be obtained by those who will take some pains to study 
the subject. But Madame Surville pauses on the thresh- 
old of his manhood. She gives certain facts of his 
struggling life, and relates his conduct under them ; but 
to the man himself, the matured spirit, the great soul 
who has bequeathed to us so rich a legacy, we are left 
without a guide. Madame Surville says, at the close of 
her little book, written six years after his death, that the 
time might come when she would complete her account 
of his life and show another aspect of his character ; but 
the time, apparently, never came. 

The next authentic source of information, his corres- 



HonorS de Balzac. 3 

pondence, throws much invaluable light on his ideas 
and opinions about his books, and also (in the letters 
to Madame Hanska) on the closing years of his life ; 
but on the formative years of his youth and early man- 
hood they are silent. By his own will, apparently, 
little trace of his real self at that period, or in his middle 
manhood, remains, except as it may be found in his 
writings. Of the records left by the contemporaries who 
knew him, that of Theophile Gautier is incomparably 
the best. Materialist himself, and seeing Balzac chiefly 
on his material side, which was ver} T strong and real, he 
nevertheless has left us almost the only true apprecia- 
tion of Balzac's spirit shown in the writings of those 
who came in contact with him. It would seem as 
though the sincere affection which united them gave 
him insight, if not intuition. 

Scattered among the writings of his associates are a 
few just estimates of Balzac as a man ; but even these 
are derived from a one-sided knowledge of him. George 
Sand, with her broad, generous, and loving spirit, knew 
him personally, and comprehended him in her way. 
Champfleury saw him at the close of his life for a short 
time only, but he has made a good portrait of him, and 
records the fact that having read all which up to that 
time had been written of Balzac, he found nothing 
useful or representative. 

It is from these various sources, and from two vol- 
umes written by contemporaries which have done much 
to mislead the judgment of the world (those of Leon 
Gozlan and Edmond Werdet) that all memoirs and 
studies of Balzac as a man have been derived. In fact, 
the latter are mostly reproductions of the former, put 



4 Honore de Balzac. 

into the language of the compilers, and overlaid with 
fanciful additions (as in the case of Gabriel Ferry's 
"Amies de Balzac"), which often obscure real facts, 
or put them out of focus. 

The sole object of the present volume is to present 
Balzac to American readers. This memoir is intended 
to precede the American translations of- his work. 
Translated work is necessarily addressed to those who 
have not easy access to originals. Bearing this in 
mind, it has been thought best to go back to the only 
authentic sources of information and present them in 
their own words, with such simple elucidations as a 
close intercourse with Balzac's mind, necessitated by 
conscientious translation, naturally gives, — an inter- 
course which cannot be wholly confined to the work of 
such a mind but, if it exists at all, must reach to the 
spirit that produced the work. 

The reader is asked to remember that this memoir is 
meant to be a presentation of the man, and not of his 
work, except as it was a part of himself. Three 
fourths of that work, in translation, is, or will be, before 
the American public which will thus have the means of 
judging for itself. 

In giving this volume to the public sincere thanks 
are offered to those who have encouraged and promoted 
it : to M. le Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul for 
the more than courtesy, the cordial kindness with 
which he answered inquiries ; and to Prof. Edward S. 
Holden, LL.D.. etc., Director of the Lick Observatory, 
University of California, for his sympathetic and inspir- 
ing advice. 



Honore de Balzac. 



CHAPTER II. 

HIS SISTER, MADAME SURVILLE's NARRATIVE. 1 

I feel it a <\xity to my brother and to the world to 
publish certain details which, at the present day, I 
alone can give, in order that a true and faithful biogra- 
phy may at some future time be written of the author 
of the Comedie Humaine. Balzac's friends have urged 
me to cut short as soon as possible the legendary tales 
which never fail to collect around illustrious names 
and so prevent the growth of errors which might come 
in time to be believed, as to my brother's character 
and the circumstances of his life. I fully understand 
that it is best for me to tell the facts now, while a 
goodly number of persons are still living to confirm 
them. 

The Comedie Humaine has excited almost as much 
antagonism as appreciation. Quite recently certain 
critics have harshly judged it in the name of religion 
and morality, — two powers which the opponents of all 
great renowns have ever sought to summon on their 
side. I believe that never, at any period of French 
history, has there been a painter of manners and morals 

1 Balzac, sa vie et ses oeuvres, d'apres sa correspondance, par 
Mrae. L. Surville, ne'e de Balzac. 1 vol. Calraann Levy, Paris, 
1878. The book was first published in 1856. 



6 Ronore de Balzac. 

who has not incurred the reproach of immorality ; but 
I find it difficult to imagine what sort of literature 
would be the outcome of the principles such critics are 
seeking to impose upon writers, if those who profess 
them were to put them into practice. For instance, 
would they succeed in proving that Balzac was mis- 
taken in his belief that the novel of social life and 
morals cannot avoid the contrasts of light and shade, 
and that mankind cannot be rightly instructed by the 
picture of their virtues only? 

I have neither the power nor the desire to argue 
against such judgments ; I am not seeking in these 
pages to defend my brother. Time, which has laid its 
chrism upon many a genius insulted and rejected in its 
day, will assign him his place in the literature of his 
country. On that judge, who alone is impartial and 
infallible, we must rely. 

My brother was born at Tours, May 16, 1799, Saint- 
Honore's day. The name pleased my father, and 
though it had no precedent in either line of the family, 
he gave it to his son. My mother had lost her first 
child by endeavoring to nurse it herself. A wet-nurse 
for little Honore was therefore chosen, who lived just 
outside the gates of the town in an airy house sur- 
rounded b} r gardens. My father and mother were so 
satisfied with this woman that they put me with her 
and left my brother in her care after he was weaned. 
He was nearly four years old when we returned to- 
gether to our father's house. 

Honore's fine health saved our mother from those 
latent anxieties which commonly find expression in ten- 
der solicitude and the indulgences which spoil a child, 



Honore de Balzac. 7 

but are so dear to it. In those days children did not 
play the important part now assigned to them in many 
families. They were not brought iuto notice ; they were 
kept children ; and, above all, they were trained in re- 
spect and obedience to their parents. Our governess, 
Mademoiselle Delahaye, may have had too much zeal 
in this direction, for it is certain that, with respect 
and obedience, she also inspired us with fear. My 
brother long remembered the small terrors that beset 
us when she took us to bid good-morning to our mother, 
or when we entered the latter's presence to wish her 
good-night. To us these were solemn ceremonies, 
though repeated daily. It is true that by certain signs, 
previously agreed upon with Mademoiselle, our mother 
saw (on our faces, she said) the traces of our misdeeds 
which drew down upon us her stern displeasure, for she 
alone had the right to punish or reward us. The result 
was that Honore was neither petted nor transformed 
into a prodig} T at an age when a child understands its 
parent's love only through smiles and kisses. If he 
showed at an early age any sign of the qualities which 
were destined to make him famous no one remarked it, 
and no one has since recalled it. He was a charming 
child; his joyous temper, his smiling, well-cut lips, his 
great brown eyes, both soft and brilliant, his high fore- 
head, and his wealth of black hair made him an object 
of admiration when we were taken to walk in the public 
promenades. 

Family surroundings react so powerfully on the char- 
acters of children, and exert such influence on their 
fate that some account of our parents seems to me 
quite necessary. It will, moreover, serve to explain 



8 HonorS de Balzac. 

the first events of m} T brother's youth. Oar father, 
born in Languedoc in 1746, was advocate of the Council 
under Louis XVI. His profession led him into rela- 
tions with the notabilities of that time, and with the 
men whom the "Revolution brought to the surface and 
made famous. These affiliations enabled him in 1793 
to save more than one of his old friends and former 
protectors. Such services exposed him to some danger, 
and a very influential Conventional, who felt an interest 
in citizen Balzac, hastened to remove him from the 
sight and memory of Robespierre bj T sending him to 
the North to organize a commissariat for the army. 
Thrown thus by chance into the War department, my 
father remained in it, and was in charge of the com- 
missariat of the Twent3*-second Military Division when 
he married, in 1797, the daughter of one of his supe- 
riors, then director of the Paris hospitals. Subsequently, 
he lived nineteen j'ears in Tours, where he bought a 
house and some landed property in the vicinity of the 
town. At the end of ten } T ears it was proposed to ap- 
point him mayor, but he declined the honor, not wishing 
to give up the management of a large hospital which 
he had taken upon himself. He feared he should not 
find time to properly fulfil these triple functions. 

My father was a mixture of Montaigne, Rabelais, 
and my uncle Toby in his philosophy, his originality, 
and his goodness of heart ; and he had, like m}- uncle 
Toby, a predominant idea. That idea was health. He 
managed his life with the view of living as long as pos- 
sible. He calculated, from the number of years re- 
quired to bring a man to perfect maturity, that his life 
ought to last one hundred }'ears and more ; to attain 



Honore de Balzac. 9 

that more he took the most extraordinary care of him- 
self, and was constantly on the watch to maintain what 
he called the u equilibrium of the vital forces." And 
a mighty labor it was, truly ! His fatherly solicitude 
still further increased this desire for longevity. When 
forty-five years of age, not having married, and not 
expecting to do so, he had put the bulk of his property 
into life annuities, half on the Grand-livre [the Public 
Funds], half with Lafarge's bank, then just established, 
he being one of its largest shareholders. When he 
died in 1829, at the age of eighty-three, from the effects 
of an accident, he was receiving an income of twelve 
thousand francs from this source. The reduction of 
interest, and the waste which took place in -the admin- 
istration of the Tontine diminished his immediate rev- 
enues, but his green old age seemed to justify his hope 
of sharing with the State the immense capital of the 
Tontine by the extinction of all the other shareholders 
of his class, — a result which might have repaired the 
wrong he did to his family by the investment. This 
hope had passed into a conviction with him, and he was 
constantly urging his family to preserve their health so 
that they might enjoy the millions he should leave 
them. This conviction, which we all shared, made him 
happy and consoled him under the reverses which over- 
took him at the close of his life. " No matter, Lafarge 
will put everything right," he used to say. 

His originality, which became proverbial at Tours, 
was quite as marked in his talk as in his actions ; he 
said and did nothing like other people ; Hoffmann might 
have used him as a type for one of his creations. My fa- 
ther was wont to scoff at other men who, as he declared, 



10 Honore de Balzac. 

were toiling incessantly for their own misfortunes. He 
could not meet a poor sickly or deformed being without 
railing at the parents, and, above all, at the rulers who 
did not give as much care to the preservation of the 
human race as they did to that of animals ; and he 
held certain singular theories on this debatable subject, 
which he propounded in a manner no less singular. 
" But wiry give them to the world? " he used to say, 
walking up and down the room in his wadded gown of 
puce-colored silk, his chin buried in a huge cravat cher- 
ished from the days of the Director}-. ' ' The}- would 
call me an ' original ' " (a term which greatly angered 
him), " and there would n't be one poor rickety being 
the less. Has an} r philosopher, except Cervantes, who 
gave the death-blow to knight-errantty, ever been able 
to correct humanity ? — that palsied being, always 3'oung 
always old, which keeps alive somehow — happily for 
us and our successors," he would add, with a laugh. 

But he never scoffed at humanity unless he was un- 
able to succor it, as he proved on man} T occasions. 
Epidemics broke out in the hospital, especially after 
the return of the soldiers from Spain ; at such times 
my father took up his abode in the hospital building, 
and forgetting his own health to watch over that of 
others, he displa} T ed a zeal which in him was devotion. 
He put down man} T abuses without fearing the enmities 
that sort of courage invites ; and he introduced great 
and beneficent improvements, such, for instance, as 
work-shops for the old men, for whom he obtained 
wages. 

His memory, his spirit of observation, and his gift of 
repartee were not less remarkable than his originality. 



Honore de Balzac. 11 

He remembered after an interval of twenty years the 
exact words that were said to him. At seventy years 
of age, meeting unexpectedly a friend of his childhood, 
he spoke to him, without the least hesitation, in the 
dialect of their province, though he had not returned 
there since he left it at fourteen. His keen observation 
enabled him more than once to predict the success or 
failure of men whom the world appreciated far other- 
wise than as he judged them ; time often proved the 
justice of his prophecy. As for his repartees, they 
never failed him under any circumstances. I remem- 
ber that some one read aloud an article on a centenarian 
(not allowed, as will readily be imagined, to pass in 
silence), and my father, against his usual custom, in- 
terrupted the reader to exclaim enthusiastically, " He 
lived wisely, and did not squander his health in ex- 
cesses, like the imprudent youth of the present day." It 
turned out, however, that this wise man was in the 
habit of getting drunk, and (this in my father's eyes 
was an enormity against health) ate a supper every 
night. "Well," he said, without a sign of discompos- 
ure, "he shortened his life, that's all." 

When Honore was of an age to understand and ap- 
preciate his father the latter was a fine old man still 
full of energy, with courteous manners, speaking sel- 
dom, and rarely of himself, indulgent to youth, with 
which he was in sympatiry, leaving to all the liberty he 
demanded for himself, possessed of a sound and upright 
judgment, in spite of his eccentricities, and a temper so 
equable, a character so kind that he made his home 
happ3 r to all about him. His fine education enabled 
him to follow with delight the advance of science and 



12 Honore de Balzac. 

of social amelioration, the future of which he foresaw 
from the start. His wise remarks and his many curious 
anecdotes helped his son greatly to a knowledge of life, 
and supplied him with the subject of more than one of 
his books. 

My mother, who was rich and beautiful and very 
much younger than her husband, had a rare vivacit}- of 
mind and imagination, an unwearying activity, great 
firmness of decision, and boundless devotion to her 
family. Her love for her children brooded over them, 
but she expressed it more by actions than b} T words. 
Her whole life proved her love ; she forgot herself for 
us, and this self-forgetfulness brought misfortunes upon 
her which she bore courageously. Her last and bitter- 
est trial was to survive, at the age of seventy, her 
glorious son, and to succor him in his last moments ; 
she prayed beside his dying bed, supported by that 
religious faith which enabled her to exchange her 
earthly hopes for those of heaven. 

Those who knew my father and m} T mother will con- 
firm the truth of these brief sketches. The qualities of 
the author of the Come die Humaine are undoubtedly 
the logical result of those of our parents ; from our 
father he derived his originalit3 T , memory, spirit of 
observation, and judgment; from our mother, his ac- 
tivity and imagination ; and from both, his energ} T and 
kindheartedness. 

Honore was the eldest among two sisters and two 
brothers. Our sister, Laurence, died a }'Oung woman 
after five years of married life. Our brother, Henry, 
went to the colonies, where he married and settled. 
At Honore's birth all things combined to promise him 



Honore de Balzac. 13 

a fine future. Our mother's fortune, that of our mater- 
nal grandmother, who lived with her daughter from the 
time she became a widow, the salary and the annuities 
of our father made a handsome income for the family. 
My mother devoted herself wholly to the education of 
her children, and thought herself obliged to treat them 
with severity to neutralize the effects of the indulgence 
shown to us hy our father and grandmother. This sever- 
ity repressed the tender feelings of little Honore, who, 
was also reserved and shy in presence of his father's 
age and gravity. This state of things was profitable 
to fraternal affection, which was certainly the first feel- 
ing to bud and blossom in his heart. I was only two 
years } T ounger than Honore, and in the same situation 
as he towards our parents. Brought up together in our 
nurse's home we loved each other tenderly. My recol- 
lections of his tenderness date far back. I have not 
forgotten the headlong rapidity with which he ran to 
save me from tumbling down the three high steps 
without a railing which led from our nurse's room to 
the garden. His loving protection continued after we 
returned to our father's house, where more than once 
he allowed himself to be punished for my faults without 
betraying me. Once, when I came upon the scene in 
time to accuse myself of the wrong, he said: "Don't 
acknowledge next time ; I like to be punished for you." 
Such pure and artless devotion is never forgotten. 
Our affection was fostered still farther by propi- 
tious circumstances. We lived together, then and 
later, in a confidence and close intimacy which had 
no limits. Throughout his life I knew my brother's 
joys and troubles, and I had, at all times, the precious 



14 Honore de Balzac. 

privilege of consoling him : that certainty is now my 

joy. 

The greatest event of his childhood was a journey to 
Paris, where my mother took him in 1804, to show him 
to his grandparents. They were delighted with their 
pretty little grandson, and showered him with gifts and 
kisses. Little accustomed to such petting, Honore re- 
turned to Tours with his head full of joyous memories 
and his heart filled with love for those dear grand- 
parents, about whom he talked to me incessantly, de- 
scribing them as best he could, also their house, their 
beautiful garden, not forgetting Mouche, the big watch- 
dog, with whom he had struck up an intimac3\ This 
visit to Paris gave food to his imagination for a long 
time. Our grandmother was fond of relating his say- 
ings and doings on this occasion, especially the follow- 
ing. One evening she had sent for a magic-lantern. 
Honore, not seeing his friend Mouche among the audi- 
ence, jumped up, calling out in a tone of authorit} 7, : 
" Stop ! stop ! " (Probably he felt himself master in his 
grandfather's house.) Then he left the room and 
present^ returned, dragging the dog, to whom he 
said : "Sit you there, Mouche, and look at the show ; 
it won't cost you anything, for grandpapa pays." 

Some months after this trip Honore's brown silk 
jacket and handsome blue belt were changed for mourn- 
ing garments. His dear grandpapa was dead, struck 
down by apoplexy. It was the child's first grief; he 
wept bitterly when told that he would never again see 
his grandfather, and the recollection of the kind 
old man remained so present to his mind that on one 
occasion, long after the sad event, seeing me go off 



Honore de Balzac. 15 

into a wild burst of laughter while my mother was rep- 
rimanding me, he endeavored to put a stop to such 
tempestuous gayety, which threatened serious con- 
sequences, by putting his lips to my ear and saying in 
tragic tones : — 

wt Think on the death of your grandpapa ! " 

Ineffectual succor, alas ! as I had never seen my 
grandpapa, and knew nothing as yet of death. 

Thus the only words that we can recall of Honore's 
first years showed kindness of heart rather than intelli- 
gence. I remember, however, that he did show imag- 
ination in some of those childish games which George 
Sand has so well described in her Memoirs. My 
brother improvised little comedies, which amused us 
(not always the case with greater ones). For hours 
together he would twang the strings of a little red vio- 
lin, while his radiant face expressed the belief that he 
was making melody ; consequently, he was much sur- 
prised when I entreated him to stop a noise which 
might have set his friend Mouche to howling. " Don't 
you hear how pretty it is ? " he would say. Like other 
children, he read with eager interest all those fairy- 
tales in which catastrophes, more or less dramatic, 
made him cry. Perhaps they inspired him with other 
tales, for sometimes to his usual bewildering loquacity 
there succeeded long periods of silence which were 
attributed to fatigue, but which may really have been 
reveries cariying him, even then, to imaginary worlds. 

When he was seven years of age he was taken from 
the da} r school at Tours and sent to the seminary at 
Vendome, then very celebrated. We went to see him 
regularly at Easter of every year, and also on the 



16 Honor e de Balzac. 

days when prizes were distributed ; but he was seldom 
crowned ; reproaches were more plentiful than praises 
for him on those great days which he awaited so im- 
patiently, and out of which he expected such delight. 
He remained seven years at this school, and during 
that time he had no holidays.. The memory of those 
days inspired him with the first part of Louis Lambert. 
In that part he and Louis Lambert are one ; it is Bal- 
zac in two persons. The school routine, the small 
events of his daily life, what he suffered and what he 
thought, all is true ; even the Treatise on the Will 
which one of the professors (whom he names) burned 
without reading in his anger at finding it in place of a 
theme which he had ordered the boy to do. My brother 
always regretted the loss of that paper, regarding it as 
a proof of his intellect at that period. 

He was fourteen years of age when Monsieur Mares- 
chal, the head of the school, wrote to our mother, be- 
tween Easter and the prize-giving, to come at once 
and remove her son. He was attacked with a sort of 
coma, which was all the more alarming to his masters 
because the} r saw no cause for it. My brother was to 
them an idle scholar ; the}? could not, therefore, attrib- 
ute this peculiar affection of the brain to intellectual 
fatigue. Honore, who had become thin and punj T , was 
like a somnambulist sleeping with open e} T es ; he 
heard scarcely any of the questions that were addressed 
to him, and could not reply when asked abruptly, 
"What are you thinking of?" "Where are you?" 
This extraordinary state, which in after years he fully 
understood, came from a sort of congestion of ideas 
(to use his own expression). He had read, unknown 



Honore de Balzac. IT 

to his masters, the greater part of the rich library of the 
college, which had been formed by the learned Orato- 
rian founders and proprietors of this vast institution, 
where more than three hundred lads were educated at 
a time. It was in the punishment cells, to which he 
was sent almost daily, that he devoured these serious 
books, which developed his mind at the expense of his 
body at an age when the physical powers should be 
exercised at least as much as the intellectual. No one 
in the family has ever forgotten the amazement caused 
b} 7 Honore's appearance when his mother brought him 
back from Vendome. 

" See how a college returns to us the blooming 
children we trust to it ! " said our grandmother, 
mournfully. 

My father, at first very anxious at the state of his 
son, was soon reassured when he saw that the change 
of scene, the fine air and the beneficent effect of home 
life sufficed to restore the liveliness and gayety of the 
lad in the adolescent period which was just beginning 
for him. Little by little the classification of ideas 
took place in his vast memory, where he already regis- 
tered the beings and the events which were about him ; 
these recollections were put to use later in his pictures 
of provincial life. Impelled by a vocation of which, 
as yet, he knew nothing, he was instinctively led to 
books and to observations which prepared the way for 
his future toil and made it fruitful ; he amassed ma- 
terials without knowing the use to which they were 
destined. Certain types in the Comedie Surname 
belong undoubtedly to this period. 

In the long walks which our mother made him take, 
2 



18 Honor e de Balzac. 

he already admired with an artist's eye the tender 
scenery of his dear Touraine which afterwards he de- 
scribed so well. He would sometimes stop short with 
enthusiasm before those glorious sunsets which illumine 
with such picturesque effects the gothic steeples of 
Tours, the scattered villages on the hill-slopes, and that 
beautiful Loire, always so majestic and covered with 
sails of every size and shape. But our mother, more 
solicitous about his exercise than his reveries, obliged 
him to fly the kite of our little brother, or to run with 
my sister and me. He would then forget all about the 
landscape, and be the youngest and the gayest of the 
four children who surrounded their mother. But it was 
not so in the cathedral of Saint-Gatien, to which she 
took us regularly on fete-days. There, Honore might 
dream at his leisure, and nought of the poetry and the 
splendor of that noble church was lost upon him. He 
noticed all, — from the marvellous effects of light pro- 
duced by the old stained windows, and the mists of 
incense enveloping, as with a veil, the officiating priests, 
to the pomps of the divine service, rendered all the 
more imposing by the presence of the cardinal-arch- 
bishop. The countenances of the priests, which he 
studied daily, enabled him later to describe the abbes 
Birotteau and Lorau, and the cure Bonnet, whose tran- 
quillity of soul forms so fine a contrast to the agitations 
of remorse which torture the repentant Veronique. 1 
This church had made so great an impression on him 
that the mere name of Saint-Gatien awakened a world 
of memories in which the fresh and pure sensations of 
early youth, and the religious feelings which never left 
1 In the Cure' de Village. 



Honore de Balzac. 19 

him throughout his life, were mingled with the ideas of 
manhood already germinating in that powerful brain. 

He attended the lectures of the college course, and 
studied under his father's roof with tutors. Already 
he began to sa}^ that the world would talk of him some 
day ; a speech that made us laugh, and which became 
the text for endless witticisms. In the name of his < 
future fame we made him submit to innumerable little 
tortures, preludes to the greater tortures he was to bear 
as the cost of his acquired glory. This 3'outhful appren- 
ticeship was far from useless. He accepted all such 
teasing with a heartier laugh than ours, (he was 
alwa\*s laughing in those most happy days). Never 
was a nature more amiable than his, and yet never did 
any one develop so young the desire and the intuitive 
expectation of fame. 

But we were far from increasing or encouraging this 
desire. My brother, who was, as I have already said, 
somewhat repressed by awe, thought much more than 
he ever said in presence of his father and mother. 
They, of course, being unable to judge him from a full 
knowledge of what he was, regarded him, like his mas- 
ters, as an ordinary boy who had to be prodded and 
forced to do his lessons in Greek and Latin. Our 
mother, who more particularly took the management of 
him, had so little suspicion of what her elder son al- 
ready was that she attributed to accident the sagacious 
remarks and observations which sometimes escaped 
him. " You certainly cannot know what you are talk- 
ing about, Honore," she would say to him. He, for all 
answer, would look at her with the sagacious, or the 
quizzical, or the kindly smile with which nature had 



20 Honore de Balzac. 

endowed him. This mute and } T et eloquent protest was 
called impertinence if our mother chanced to see it ; for 
Honore, not daring to argue with her, was unable to 
explain either his thoughts or his smile. The repres- 
sion which our elders exercise over genius, the injustices 
which wound it, the obstacles that are put in its way, 
maj- possibly double its strength and give more vigor to 
its wing. At any rate, one likes to think so. 

At the close of the year 1814 my father was sum- 
moned to Paris and placed in charge of the commissa- 
riat of the First division of the army. Honore finished 
his studies with Monsieur Lepitre, rue Saint Louis, and 
with MM. Sganzer and Beuzelin, rue de Thorigny in 
the Marais, where we lived. He was not more thought 
of in those institutions than he had been at Vendome. 
While doing his exercises in Rhetoric he first became 
attracted to the beauty of the French language. I have 
preserved one of his competitive compositions (a 
speech of the wife of Brutus to her husband after the 
condemnation of her sons). The anguish of the mother 
is given with great force, and my brother's all-powerful 
faculty of entering into the souls of his personages- is 
already noticeable. 

His studies over, Honore returned for the third time 
to his father's house. This was in 1816. He was then 
a handsome youth, seventeen and a half 3'ears old, full 
of health and vigor ; no study tired him ; a smile was 
always on his lips ; he was indeed a fine 3 r oung lad, the 
very personification of happiness. My mother regarded 
work as the basis of all education, and she thoroughly un- 
derstood the business of employing time. Consequently 
she did not allow her son one idle moment. He received 



Honor e de Balzac. 21 

lessons in all those sciences which had been neglected 
in his schools, and he attended the lectures at the Sor- 
bonne. I still remember the enthusiasm he felt at the 
eloquent extempore speeches of such men as Ville- 
main. Guizot, Cousin, and others. Glowing with in- 
terest, he would repeat them, trying to associate us 
in these joys and enable us to comprehend them. He 
would rush to the public libraries to study books and 
so prepare himself to profit more by the teachings of 
those illustrious professors. During his peregrinations 
through the Latin quarter he bought, from the book- 
stalls along the quays, many rare and precious books 
which he had learned how to choose. They were the 
nucleus of that fine libraiy which his constant relations 
with publishers in after days enabled him to render so 
complete, — a library which he wished to bequeath to his 
native town, until the indifference shown to him by his 
townsmen whenever he returned to Tours wounded him 
so deeply that he resigned this intention. 

Monsieur Brun, the present prefect of the Tndre-et- 
Loire, a former schoolmate of Honore at Vendome, has 
lately, in conjunction with the mayor, Monsieur Mame, 
brother of the celebrated publisher who brought out 
Balzac's first works, placed an inscription on the house 
where the author of the Come die Humaine was born. 
This is not the house, however, in which he passed his 
childhood. My father's residence now belongs to Ma- 
dame la Comtesse d'Outremont, a friend of our family. 
It was formerly numbered 29 in the long street which 
divides the town and crosses it from the bridge to the 
Avenue de Grammont. The relations and friends of 
Balzac would have been greatly astonished in 1817, and 



22 Honore de Balzac. 

even later, to have been told that he would one day 
merit this honor paid to his memon', and still more 
amazed had the announcement been made to them that 
the street in Paris in which he died was to bear his 
name, and that a noble procession of great men would 
follow him to his last resting-place. The}' would not 
have known how to reply to such prophecies, for, in 
spite of the vivacious mind which was beginning to 
make itself felt in Honore, no one believed as yet in 
his intellect. It is true that he chattered a great deal, 
amused himself with nonsense like a child, and showed 
a good-humor and at times a guilelessness which often 
made him our butt. Still, we might have observed at 
the time, had we paid attention to it, the attraction 
which be felt to thoughtful minds and solid conversa- 
tions. Above all he liked to listen to an old friend of 

our grandmother, Mademoiselle de R , who had 

been intimately connected with Beaumarchais, and who 
lived in the same house that we lived in. My brother 
loved to make her talk of that celebrated man until, 
thanks to her details, he knew Beaumarchais's life so 
well that he might have furnished the materials for the 
fine biograplry that Monsieur de Lomenie has lately 
published. 

M} T father wished his son to study law, pass through 
all the examinations, and spend three } T ears in a law- 
yer's and in a notary's office, so as to learn the de- 
tails of legal procedure together with the form and 
terms of deeds. A man's education was not complete, 
according to my father's ideas, if he did not have a 
knowledge of ancient and modern legislation, and, 
above all, of the laws of his own country. Honore 



HonorS de Balzac. 23 

therefore entered the law office of Monsieur cle Mer- 
ville, a friend of ours. Monsieur Scribe had just left 
it. After eighteen months spent in this office he was 
received into that of Monsieur Passez, notary, where 
he remained for the same length of time. Monsieur 
Passez lived in the same house with us, and was also 
one of our intimates. These circumstances will ex- 
plain the fidelity of the descriptions of legal offices 
which is so observable in the Comedie Humaine, and 
the profound legal knowledge therein revealed. I 
once found a copy of Cesar Birotteau among the legal 
works of a Parisian barrister, and he told me that the 
work was an excellent one to consult in the matter of 
bankruptcy. 

My brother led a busy life during these years ; for, 
independently of the time spent in these offices and on 
the work given him to do b} r his masters, he had also 
to prepare himself for successive examinations. But 
his activit} T , his memoiy, and his natural faculty were 
such that he often found time to finish his evenings 
with a game of whist or boston with m}* grandmother, 
at which the kind and gentle old lady would contrive, 
by some voluntary imprudence or inattention, to let 
him win her money, which he devoted to the purchase 
of his books. He always loved those games in mem- 
ory of her ; and the recollection of her sajings and of 
her gestures used to come to him like a happiness 
which, as he said, he wrested from a tomb. 

Occasionally Honore accompanied us to a ball ; but 
having unfortunately slipped and fallen, in spite of the 
lessoas he had taken from the Opera dancing-master, 
he renounced the practice of dancing, so much did the 



24 HonorS de Balzac. 

smiles of the women who saw him fall* rankle in his 
mind ; and he vowed then to master societ\ r in some 
better wa}' than by the graces and talents of a drawing- 
room ; from that time forth he was a spectator only 
in festal scenes which, later in life, he utilized in his 
books. 

At twenty-one he had ended his legal studies and 
passed all his examinations. My father now confided 
to him the plans he had made for his future, which 
would undoubtedly have led him to wealth ; but wealth 
was then the least of Honore's desires. My father had 
formerh* protected a man whom he met again in 1814 
as a notary in Paris. The latter, being veiy grateful 
and desirous of returning to the son the service he had 
received from the father, offered to take Honore into 
his office and leave him his practice at the end of a few 
j T ears. My father's security for part of the expenses, a 
prosperous marriage, and certain regular advances from 
the splendid income of the practice would have cleared 
the position of incumbrance in a very few 3-ears. 

But imagine Balzac bending, for ten years perhaps, 
over deeds of sale, marriage contracts, inventories, — he 
who was now aspiring secret!} 7 to literary fame ! His 
stupefaction was great when the plan was divulged to 
him. But he openly stated his wishes, and then it was 
our father's turn to be stupefied. A lively discussion 
followed. Honore eloquently combated the powerful 
reasons given to him ; and his looks, words, and tones 
revealed so genuine a vocation that my father granted 
him two years in which to give proofs of his talent. 
This fine legal chance thus thrown away explains the 
severity with which he was afterwards treated, and 



Honore de Balzac. 25 

also the hatred which he always felt to the notarial 
profession, — a hatred which may be noticed in several 
of his books. 

My father did not yield to Honore's wishes without 
regrets, which vexatious events increased. He had 
just been retired from active service, and he had lost 
money in two enterprises. In short, we went to live 
in a country house which he had lately bought at Ville- 
parisis, about sixteen miles from Paris. Fathers of 
families will understand the uneasiness of our parents 
under these circumstances. My brother had given no 
proof of literary talent, and he had his way to make ; it 
was, therefore, reasonable to desire a less doubtful 
career for him than that of literature. For one vocation 
like that which Honore declared he felt (and which he 
did indeed justify so grand]}') how man}' mediocrities 
have been suffered to drift into hopeless careers by 
such indulgence ! Consequently, this yielding of my 
father to his son's wishes was regarded as a weakness 
and generally blamed b}' the friends who took an in- 
terest in our welfare. " He was allowing Honore to 
waste the most precious years of his life. Did the 
career of a literary man ever, under any circumstances, 
lead to fortune? Had Honore the makings of a man of 
genius? They doubted it." What would these friends 
have said of m} 7 father's weakness if he had told them 
of the offer that had been made to him and refused ? 

One intimate friend who was somewhat brusque and 
very dictatorial declared that in his opinion Honore, was 
only good for a copying-clerk. The poor fellow wrote 
a good hand, to quote the expression of a writing 
master who had taught him after leaving Vendome. 



26 Honore de Balzac. 

" If I were in your place," added this friend, " I should 
not hesitate to put Honore in some government clerk- 
ship, where, with your influence, he will soon manage to 
support himself." My father, however, judged his son 
differently at this time ; and (his theories aiding) he 
believed in the intellect of his children. He contented 
himself with smiling at such advice, holding firm all the 
while to his own wa} T . It is to be presumed that his 
friends left him that evening deploring to each other 
his paternal blindness. 

M} T mother, less confiding than her husband, thought 
that a little hardship would soon bring Honore" to sub- 
mission. She therefore installed him, just before we 
moved from Paris, in a small attic room, chosen by 
him for its nearness to the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, 
the only library unknown to him, and where he now 
proposed to work. She furnished this room with the 
strict necessaries of a bed, table, and a few chairs ; the 
allowance which she made to her son for his living 
would certainly not have sufficed for his bare wants if 
she had not left behind her in Paris an old woman, for 
many }'ears attached to our service, whom she charged 
to keep an eye upon him. It was this woman whom 
he calls Iris in his letters. 1 

To pass suddenly from a comfortable home where 
, everything was abundant to the solitude of a garret, 
where all comfort was lacking to him, was surely a 
hard transition. But Honore made no complaint of 
this lodging, where, in truth, he found freedom, and to 
which he carried the glorious hopes which his first liter- 
ary disappointments were unable to extinguish. It 

1 This attic room was in the house No. 9 rue Lesdiguieres. 



Honore de Balzac. 27 

was then that his correspondence with me began, — a 
correspondence tended}' preserved, and now so full of 
dear and precious memories. I ask indulgence for the 
familiar playfulness of the first few extracts which I 
now quote. That very familiarity is their natural plea 
for it. I cannot suppress them, for the}' picture in a 
striking way the rudiments of my brother's character ; 
and I believe that the gradual development of such a 
mind is interesting to follow. In his first letter, after 
enumerating the costs of moving (items which had no 
other purpose than to show our mother he was alread}^ 
short of mone}') he confides to me that he has taken a 
servant. 

"Paris, April 12, 1819. 

" ' A servant, brother ! — what are you thinking of ! ' 

"Yes, a servant; with a name as queer as that of 
Dr. Nacquart's servant. His was called Tranquil ; 
mine is named Myself. And a bad bargain he is, 
truly ! Myself is laz} T , clumsy, thoughtless. His mas- 
ter is hungry or thirsty, and often enough he has 
neither bread nor water to give him ; he does n't even 
know how to shield him from the wind, which whistles 
through the door and window, like Tulou in his flute 
— but less agreeably. As soon as I am awake I ring 
for Myself and he makes my bed. Then he sweeps 
the room, and clumsy he is at it. 

" 'Myself! ' 

" « Yes, sir/ 

"'Look at that cobweb with the big fly buzzing 
in it till I 'm half giddy with the noise — and the fluff 
under the bed — and the dust on the window-panes 
which blinds me.' 



28 Honor e de Balzac, 

1 ' The lazy beggar gazes at me and does n't stir, and 
yet, in spite of all his defects, I can't get rid of that 
unintelligent Myself, . . . 

" Don't be surprised that I write on half a sheet of 
paper, with a bad pen, and that I talk nonsense. I 
must be careful of my expenditures, and I economize 
everywhere, in writing and in mind, as you see." 

In his second letter he excuses the first, which our 
mother had thought too careless. 

" Tell mamma I work so hard that writing to 3'ou is 
recreation, for then I go — saving your dignity and my 
own — like Sancho's ass browsing on anything I get 
hold of. No, I won't make rough copies — for shame ! 
the heart knows nothing of rough copies. If I don't 
punctuate, and if I don't read over what I have written, 
it is that you may have to read and reread it, and think 
of me a long time. There ! I '11 fling m} T pen to the 
geese if that is n't a refinement of sentiment worthy 
of a woman. . . . 

"Let me tell 3*011, mademoiselle, that economy 
reigns here for the purpose of bu\*ing a piano ; when 
my mother brings } t ou to see me j t ou will find one. I 
have taken all dimensions ; b}* setting back the walls a 
piano can be got in. If my landlord objects to the 
expense I shall add it' to the cost of the piano, and 
Rousseau's Dream [a piece by Cramer then much in 
vogue] shall echo in my garret, where a need of 
dreams makes itself felt." 

What work he meditates ! novels, comedies, comic 
operas, tragedies are all upon his list of things to be 
done. He is like a child with so many words to say he 



Honore de Balzac. 29 

does not know where to begin. First, it is Stella and 
Coqsigrue, two books that never saw the light. Of 
his projected comedies I remember only Les Deux 
jPhilosophes, which he would certainly have taken up 
again in after years had he lived. The pair scoffed at 
each other and quarrelled incessantly (like friends, 
Honore said, when relating the plot). These philos- 
ophers while despising the vanities of the world strug- 
gled with each other to obtain them ; and their failure 
to do so finally reconciled them to each other, by caus- 
ing both to curse the odious selfishness of the human 
race. For which of these works could it have been 
that he so urgently wanted our father's Tacitus, a work 
that was lacking to the library of the Arsenal? This 
want was the subject of his next letter. 

"I positively must have father's Tacitus ; he can't 
want it now that he is so full of China and the Bible." 

My father, a great admirer of the Chinese (perhaps 
because of their longevity as a nation), was at this 
time reading those thick volumes of the Jesuit mission- 
aries who were the first to describe China. He was 
also engaged in making notes to a precious edition 
which he possessed of the Bible, a book which at all 
times called forth his admiration. 

" June, 1819. 

" You can easily find out where the key of the library 
is kept. Papa is not always at home ; he does go to 
walk ; and miller Godard is at hand to bring me 
Tacitus. 

" By the bye, Coqsigrue is bej^ond n^ powers, as yet. 
I must ruminate over it and take time before writing. 

" My dear, I don't like your historical studies and your 



30 Honore de Balzac. 

maps of the centuries. Why do you ' amuse ' 3-our- 
self (what a word to use ! ) in rewriting Blair? Get him 
out of the library — you will find him close to Tacitus — 
and learn him by heart. But what good will that do 
3'ou? A girl knows enough history when she doesn't 
jumble up Hannibal with Caesar, and does n't take Thra- 
symene for a general, or Pharsalia for a Roman matron. 
Read Plutarch and books of that calibre, and you will 
be freighted for life without losing any of 3'our de- 
lightful claims to womanhood. You don't want to be 
a femme savante, fie ! 

" I dreamed deliciousty last night ; I was reading the 
Tacitus you sent me. 

" Talma is playing Auguste in China. I am terribly 
afraid I can't resist going to see him — madness ! my 
very stomach trembles. . . . My household news is dis- 
astrous ; toil interferes with cleanliness. That rascal 
of a Myself neglects me more than ever. He won't go 
down oftener than every third or fourth day to make 
my purchases, and then to the nearest and worst dealers 
in the neighborhood ; the others are too far off, and the 
fellow economizes in steps. And so it is that your 
brother (destined to fame) is alread}' fed like a great 
man, — that is to say, he is dying of hunger. 

"Another malign fact: coffee makes a terrible mess 
upon the floor ; much water is necessary to repair 
damages ; now as water does not rise naturally to my 
celestial regions (it comes down upon them in stormy 
da} T s) , it will be necessary, after buying the piano, to 
obtain the services of an hydraulic machine to wash up 
the coffee while master and valet are gaping after fame. 
When 3'ou send Tacitus don't forget the coverlet ; and 



Honore de Balzac. 31 

if you could add an old, a very old shawl, it would be 
useful to me. Are yon laughing? It is the one thing 
wanting to my nocturnal garb. I had to think first of 
my legs, where I suffer most with cold ; those I wrap in 
the Tourainean top-coat which Grogniart, of bungling 
memoiy, constructed. [Grogniart was a little tailor 
at Tours, who used to make over the clothes of the 
father for the son, not at all to the satisfaction of 
Honore.] The said top-coat coming only to my mid- 
dle, the upper half of me is ill-protected from the 
frost, which has only the roof and a flannel waistcoat 
to get through before reaching my brotherly skin, too 
tender, alas, to bear it, — in short, the cold nips me. 
As to ray head, I am counting on a Dantesque cap, 
which shall enable it to brave the blast of door and 
window. Thus equipped, I shall inhabit my palace in 
much comfort. . . . 

" I finish this letter as Cato finished his discourse ; he 
said i Let Carthage be destroyed.' I say ' Let Tacitus 
be taken ; ' and I shall be, dear student of histoiy, of 
your four feet eight inches, the very humble servant." 

Here follows a letter which I give entire ; prefacing 
it with a few remarks to make it intelligible. My 
father, wishing to spare his son the mortifications 
of self-love in case he failed in his new career, gave 
out, among our friends, that he was absent in the 
coil n toy. Monsieur de Villers, of whom Honore 
speaks in the following letter, was an old friend of the 
family, a former priest and Comte de Lyon, living at 
Nogent, a little village near the Isle-Adam. My brother 
had stayed with him several times. The witty conver- 



32 Honor e de Balzac. 

sation of the good old man, his curious anecdotes about 
the old Court, where he had been a favorite, the en- 
couragement he gave to Honore, who made him his con- 
fidant, had given rise to so true an affection between 
them that in later days Honore used to speak of Isle- 
Adam as his "paradise of inspiration." 

" November, 1819. 

" You ask for news. I shall have to manufacture it ; 
no one sets foot in im T garret. I can only tell you a lot 
of items about myself; for instance: A fire broke out 
rue Lesdiguieres, No. 9, in the head of a poor lad, 
and no engines have been able to put it out. It was 
kindled by a beautiful woman whom he does not 
know. They say she lives at the Quatre-Nations, the 
other side of the Pont des Arts ; she is called Fame. 
Unfortunately the burned youth reasons ; he says to 
himself: 'Either I have or I have not genius; in 
either case I am laying up a store of sorrows. Without 
genius, I am done for. I must then pass my life in 
feeling desires I cannot satisfy, in miserable envy, cruel 
pain. With genius, I shall be persecuted, calumniated ; 
and I know very well that Mademoiselle Fame will have 
to wipe away abundant tears. 

" There is still time to make myself a nonentit} T , and 
to become like M , who calmly judges others with- 
out knowing them, takes the opinions of politicians 
without understanding them, wins at cards, lucky man, 
though he wastes his trumps, and who will one da}' be 
a deputy, because he is rich, — a perfect man ! If I 
were to win fives in a lottery to-morrow I should be as 
successful as he, no matter what else I could say or do. 



Honore de Balzac. 33 

But not having the money to buy his hopes, I have not 
his wonderful opportunity to impose on fools ! Poor, 
pitiful humanity ! 

" Let's talk of my pleasures. Yesterctay I played a 
game of boston with my landlord, and after piling up 
miseres and piccolos, and having the luck of fools 

(perhaps I was thinking of M ), I w 7 on — three 

sous ! Mamma will say : ' Dear, dear ! Honore will be 
a gambler.' Not at all, mother, I keep watch over 
my passions. 

" I have been thinking that after the laborious winter 
I am about to go through, a few days in the country 
would do me good. No, mamma; it is not because I 
am sick of 1213- hardships — I love them. But some one 
close at 3'our elbow will tell 3'ou that exercise and fresh 
air are very good for the health of man. Now, as 
Honore is not allowed to show himself in his father's 
house why should n't he go to that kind Monsieur Vil- 
lers, who loves and encourages the poor rebel? An 
idea, mother! Suppose you write and propose the 
trip? There, now it is as good as done ; you need n't 
, put on your stern look, for we all know you are kind at 
heart, and we only half fear 3011. 

"When are you coming to see me? — to drink my 
coffee and eat scrambled eggs, stirred up in a dish you 
must bring with 3'ou ; for if I succumb and go to see 
Cinna, I shall have to renounce household utensils, and 
perhaps even the piano and the h3'draulic ram. 

"Iris, the goddess messenger, has not arrived. 1 I 
will finish this letter to-morrow. 

1 This was the old woman deputed by his mother to keep an 
eye upon his wants. 

3 



34 Honore de Balzac. 

" To-morrow. Still no Iris. Can she be misconduct- 
ing herself? [She was seventy years old.] I never 
see her except on the fly, and so out of breath she cannot 
tell me one quarter of what I want to know. Do you 
think of me as much as I think of you ? Do you some- 
times cry out when at whist or boston, ' Honore, 
where art thou ? ' I did not tell you that besides the 
conflagration in my head I have had a frightful tooth- 
ache, followed by a swelling, which makes my present 
appearance hideous. Do I hear you say, ' Have it 
drawn ' ? The devil ! a man clings to his teeth ; he has 
got to bite sometimes, I suppose, even in my career, 
if only at toil. Hark ! I hear the puffing of the 
goddess. 

" Thanks for } T our tenderness and the provisions ; I 
recognize you in the jam-pot and the flowers." 

After long hesitation, he chose the tragedj* of Crom- 
well for his opening work, — tragic enough, as will be 
seen by the sequel. 

"I have chosen Cromwell for my subject, because it 
is the finest in modern histoiy. Ever since I began to 
take it up and weigh it I have flung myself into that 
period tooth and nail. Ideas crowd upon me ; but I 
am constantly held back b} r my want of faculty for 
versification. I shall bite my nails off more than once 
before I get through the first scene. If you only knew 
the difficulties of such work ! The great Racine spent 
two whole years in polishing Phedre, the despair of 
poets. Two 3'ears ! two years ! think of it — two years ! 

u But how sweet it is, working night and day, to asso- 



Honore de Balzac. 35 

ciate my work with those so dear to me. Ah, sister, if 
heaven has indeed endowed me with talent my great- 
est joy will be to see my fame reflect on all of you ! 
What happiness to vanquish oblivion, and to shed 
another lustre on the name of Balzac ! 1 My blood glows 
at the thought. When a fine idea comes into my mind 
I fancy I hear your voice saying to me, ' Courage ! ' 

" In my off hours I am scratching off Stella, a pretty 
little story. I have abandoned the comic opera. There 
is no way, in my burrow, of finding a composer. Be- 
sides, I ought not to write for the taste of the present 
day, but do as the Racines and the Corneilles did — 
work for posterity ! And then, I must own the second 
act was weak, and the first too full of brilliant music." 

" Too full of brilliant music" how much of 
Honore's character is in those five words ; he actually 
saw and heard that opera. 

"Well, reflection for reflection, I prefer to reflect 
on Cromwell. But there are usually two thousand 
verses in a tragedy ; imagine my reflections on that ! 
Pity me — what am I sa3'ing? No, don't pity me, for I 
am happy ; envy me rather, and think of me often." 

His hopes were sometimes mingled with anxieties. 
Here is a letter in which he expresses them : — 

" 1820. 

"Ah, sister, what tortures are mine ! I shall offer a 
petition to the pope for the first vacant niche of a mar- 

1 This allusion is to Jean-Louis de Balzac, one of the creators 
of French prose, 1594-1654. He wrote " Le Socrate Chretien," 
u Aristippus," etc. 



36 HonorS de Balzac. * 

tyr. I have just discovered a fault of construction in 
m} T regicide, and it swarms with bad lines. I am a 
pater doloroso this da}\ If I am, indeed, a miserable 
rhymester I ma}' as well go hang myself. I and my 
traged}' are like Perrette and her milk jug ; perhaps 
the comparison will turn out only too true. But I must 
succeed in this work and, no matter what it costs me, 
have something finished to show when mamma re- 
quires me to account for nrv time. Often I sit up all 
night to work ; but I do not tell her, it would make her 
uneasy. What troubles come of a love of fame ! Long 
live the grocers, hang them ! they sell all da) T and 
count up their gains at night, and delectate themselves 
now and then with some horrid melodrama, and then 
they are happy ! — 3-es, but they have to spend their 
lives between soap and cheese. So, long live the men 
of letters, say I. Yes, but they have n't a peniry in 
their pockets, and are only rich in pride. Pooh ! let us 
live and let live, and long live all the world ! " 

He sends me the plan of his tragedy ; but in the ut- 
most secrecy, for he wants to surprise the family. So 
he writes at the head of Ms letter, " For your eye only." 
Months are consumed over the work, about which he 
writes to me incessantly, with continual alternations of 
hope and fear. Serious thoughts begin to mingle with 
his boyish gavety. 

" 1820. 

"I have abandoned the Jardin des Plantes," he 
writes, " for Pere-Lachaise. The Jardin des Plantes is 
too sad. I get good strong inspiring thoughts during 
my walks in Pere-Lachaise, where I go to study sor- 



Honor 6 de Balzac. 37 

rows ; true sorrow is so hard to paint — it needs so 
much simplicity. Of all the affections of the soul grief 
is the most difficult to represent ; in that we moderns are 
the very humble servants and followers of the ancients. 
" Surely the noblest epitaphs are the single names: 
La Fontaine, Massena, Moliere, — names that tell all 
and make the passer dream ! " 

He dreams of great men ; he pities those who are 
victims of the vulgar crowd which understands them 
not, neither their ideas, nor their actions, nor their 
work, and he thus concludes : — 

" The lives of great men must ever be in all ages the 
consolation for mediocrity." 

He tells how he takes particular pleasure on that 
height of Pere-Lachaise from which all Paris can be 
seen ; the spot where his Rastignac stood after render- 
ing his last duty to Pere Goriot, where Balzac himself 
now rests. Standing on that spot, he asked himself 
more than once, as he thought on the illustrious dead 
about him, whether the world would hereafter pay 
homage at his tomb. Sometimes, in his days of hope- 
fulness, he exclaims, like Rastignac, " The world is 
mine, for I understand it ! " And then he returns to 
his garret, "where all is dark as an oven, and no 
one but me could see at all," he adds merrily. 

Like his own Desplein in the Messe de VAthee he 
complains that the oil of his lamp costs him more than 
his bread ; but still, he loves his dear garret. 

"The time I spend here will be to me a source of 
tender memoiy. To live as I fancy, to work according 



38 Honore de Balzac. 

to my taste and in my humor, to do nothing if I so will, 
to rest in thought on a future which I am able to make 
noble, to think of 3 T ou and know you are happy, to 
have the Julie of Rousseau for my mistress, La Fon- 
taine and Moliere for my friends, Racine for my mas- 
ter, and Pere-Lachaise for my walks — Ah ! if it could 
only last forever." 

The opinion of the family friend who advised mak- 
ing him a copying-clerk came back to his mind at times 
and made him anxious ; then he would wax indignant 
and exclaim, "I'll give the lie to that man ! " The lie 
given, he dedicated to him, for all vengeance, one of 
his finest works. Neither did he forget the smiles of 
the women who saw his slip at the ball ; he resolved to 
win quite other smiles from their lips. Such thoughts 
redoubled his ardor for work ; trifling circumstances 
lead often to great results ; the}' do not make a voca- 
tion, but they spur the mind to follow one. 

In another letter, sufficiently remarkable for me to 
remember it at this distance of time, he showed he was 
beginning to distinguish the different horizons of social 
life, the obstacles to be overcome in all careers before 
we can force our wa} r through the crowds which throng 
the outskirts. This letter, evidently written for my 
mother's e} T e, was no doubt given to her, for it is not in 
my collection. In it he anatyzed the cares and the toil 
which inevitably awaited the lawyer, doctor, soldier, 
merchant ; the luck} 7 chances they must encounter 
before the}' could get enough recognition to succeed. 
He did not conceal the difficulties and the thorns of the 
literary profession, but he showed that they were every- 



Honore de Balzac. 39 

where; "if so," he concluded, "why not grant liberty 
to one who feels within him an irresistible vocation? " 
This was the moral of the letter. I transcribe one 
more fragment of the correspondence dated from his 
garret. It is curious on account of the period at which 
it was written (April, 1820) and shows the clearness of 
a mind which was beginning to meditate widely on 
many subjects. 

"I am more infatuated than ever with my career; 
for a crowd of reasons from which I will select only 
those which you may not have thought of. Our revo- 
lutions are far from being over. I foresee, from the 
way in which tilings are stirring, many more storms. 
Be it good or evil the representative system demands 
immense talent of all kinds ; great writers must neces- 
sarily be sought for in political crises, for they alone 
unite with scientific knowledge the spirit of observation 
and a profound perception of the human heart. If I 
am to be a great one (which we don't yet know, I ad- 
mit) I ma}* some day be illustrious in other ways than 
literature ; to add to the title of a great writer that of a 
great citizen is an ambition which may well tempt a 
man." 

The scene was now to change. Honore's first hopes 
were to be followed by his first disappointments. He 
returned to his father's house at the end of April, 1820, 
with his tragedy completed. He arrived all joyful, for 
he counted on a triumph, and he wished certain friends 
to be present at the reading, — not forgetting the one 
who had been so mistaken about him. 

The friends assembled ; the solemn trial began. The 



40 Honore de Balzac. 

enthusiasm of the reader became more and more chilled 
as he noted the slight impression he was making, and 
saw the icy or the downcast faces of those about him. 
Mine was among the downcast. What I suffered during 
that reading was a foretaste of the terrors which the first 
representations of Vaiitrin and Quinola were destined 
to give me. Crormcell did not revenge him, as yet, 

upon M , who, rough as ever, gave his opinion upon 

the traged}' without mincing it. Honore cried out 
against him, refused to accept his verdict ; but the rest 
of the audience agreed, though more kindry, in think- 
ing the work a failure. My father met with the ap- 
proval of all b}' proposing to submit the play to a com- 
petent and impartial authority. Monsieur Surville, the 
engineer of the canal de l'Ourcq, who became soon 
after his brother-in-law, proposed his former professor 
at the Ecole Polytechniqne. Jffy brother accepted this 
literary elder as sovereign judge. The good old man, 
after reading the play conscientiously, declared that 
the author ought to do anything, no matter what, ex- 
cept literature. Honore received the verdict full in the 
face without flinching, for he did not admit himself 
beaten. 

" Tragedies are not my line, that's all," he said, and 
returned to work. 

But fifteen months of garret life had so reduced him 
that my mother would not let him go back to it. She 
insisted on his coming home, where she looked after 
him solicitously. It was then that he wrote, in the 
space of five j^ears, ten novels in forty volumes, which 
he considered mere attempts at his art, and very im- 
perfect ones ; for this reason he published them under 



Honore de Balzac. 41 

various pseudonyms, out of respect for the name of 
Balzac, once celebrated, and to which he so much de- 
sired to add a lustre of his own. Mediocrity is not so 
modest ! I am careful not to give the names of these 
books, wishing to obey his express wish that they 
should never be acknowledged. 

Materially most comfortable in his father's house he 
nevertheless regretted his dear garret, where he had 
the quiet that was lacking to him in a sphere of activ- 
ity in which ten persons (counting masters and ser- 
vants) revolved about him ; where the small as well as 
the great events of the family disturbed him ; and 
where, even when at work, he heard the wheels of the 
domestic machine which the vigilant and indefatigable 
mistress kept in motion. Eighteen months after his 
return to his father's roof I was living, for the time be- 
ing, at Bayeux, and our correspondence began again. 1 
My brother, then among his own people, wrote much 
more of them than of himself, and with the freedom his 
confidence in me permitted. He gives me domestic 
scenes and conversations which might be thought whole 
pages taken from the Comedie Humaine. In one of 
these letters he compares his father to the pyramids of 
Egypt, unchangeable, immutable amid the sand-storms 
of the desert. In another he announces the marriage 
of our sister Laurence. Her portrait, that of her lover, 
the enthusiasm of the family for the new son-in-law, 
are all painted with a master's hand, and the pen of 
Balzac. He concludes with these words : — 

1 Mademoiselle Laure de Balzac married, May, 1820, Monsieur 
Midy de la Greneraye Surville, engineer of the department of 
pouts et chaussees, — public works. 



42 Honor € de Balzac. 

"We are fine originals in this holy family of ours. 
What a pity I can't put us all into nay novels." * 

As the majority of these letters would have no interest 
for the public, I can only extract such parts as relate to 
Honore himself. The following will show his first dis- 
couragements. He is advancing in life and sees that 
the way is difficult. 

"You ask for particulars of the fete, and to-day I 
have nothing to give you but sadness of heart. I think 
myself the most unhappy of all the unhappy beings 
who are struggling to live beneath that beauteous ce- 
lestial vault which the Eternal has starred with his 
almighty hand. Fetes ! it is but a mournful litany I 
can send you in reply. My father, on his way back 
from Laurence's marriage was struck in the left eye by 
Louis's whip. To think that Louis's whip should injure 
that fine old age, the joy and pride of us all ! . . . My 
heart bleeds. At first the injury was thought greater 
than it is, happily. Father's apparent calmness pained 
me. I would rather he had complained ; I should have 
thought that complaints would relieve him. But he is so 
proud, and justly so, of his moral strength, that I dared 

1 Mrae. Surville's family loyalty omits the rest of this letter in 
which, after relating " very confidentially " the nervous condition 
of his mother and grandmother he adds, " Alas ! how comes it 
that people have so little indulgence for others in this life ; why do 
they seek to turn everything into a means of wounding their fel- 
lows 1 How few are willing to live in that hearty good-will that 
you and I and papa can live in. Nothing angers me so much as 
these great demonstrations of affection which smother you with 
kisses and call you selfish if you don't exaggerate your own, and 
have no conception of inward feelings which only manifest them- 
selves when the right time comes.'" 



Honore de Balzac. 43 

not even comfort him ; } r et an old man's suffering is as 
painful to see as a woman's. I could neither think nor 
work and yet I must work, must write, write to earn 
the independence they will not give me. I must en- 
deavor to get m} T freedom lyy these novels ; and what 
novels ! Ah, Laure, what a fall for my glorious pro- 
jects ! If they would only have given me an allowance 
of fifteen hundred francs a year I might have worked 
for fame ; but for such work I must have time, and I 
must live ! 1 I have no other way than this ignoble one 
by which to win my independence. And if I do not 
quickly earn some money the spectre of the place will 
reappear. I may not be made a notary, for Monsieur 

T has lately died ; but I think that M , that 

dreadful man, is even now inquiring for a place for me. 
Regard me as dead if thej^ put me under that extin- 
guisher ; I shall become like the horse of a treadmill 
which does his thirty or forty rounds an hour, eats, 
drinks, and sleeps by rule and measure. And the}' 
call that mechanical rotation, that perpetual recurrence 
of the same things, living ! 

" Ah, if something would cast a charm over my cold 
existence ! I have no flowers in my life, and yet I am 
at the season when they bloom. What good will for- 
tune or enjoyments do me when my youth is gone? 
Why wear the clothes of the actor if we never play the 
role? The old man is one who has dined and looks on 
to see others eat, but as for me, I am young, my plate 

1 He had begged his parents to grant him an allowance of fif- 
teen hundred francs a year that lie might return to a garret in 
Paris, where he could have solitude and the facilities for literary 
training of which he was deprived at Villeparisis. 



44 Honore de Balzac. 

is empt} T , and I hunger ! Laure, Laure, my two im- 
mense and sole desires, — to be famous and to be 
loved, — will they ever be satisfied ? 

" I send you two new books. The}' are still ver}< bad 
and, above all, unliterary. You will find one or two 
rather funm* things, and some types of character, but a 
miserable plot. The veil does not fall, unluckily, till 
after the}* are printed ; and as for corrections, I can't 
even think of them, they would cost more than the 
book. The only merit of these two novels is, dear, 
that they bring me in a thousand francs ; but the 
money is only payable in bills at long sight. Will it 
be paid? 

" Still, I am beginning to feel nxy pulse and under- 
stand my powers. But to be conscious of what I am 
worth, and to sacrifice the flower of my ideas on such 
rubbish ! It is enough to make me weep. Ah, if I had 
onl}' the wherewithal to subsist on, I would soon find me a 
niche where I could write books that would live — per- 
haps ! My ideas change so much that nvy method must 
change too. Before long there will be betwixt the me 
of to-day and the me of to-morrow the difference that 
exists between the 3-outh of twenty and the man of 
thirty. I reflect, my ideas mature ; I do know that 
natuis has treated me well in the heart and in the head 
she has given me. Believe me, dear sister (for I need 
a believer), I do not despair of one day becoming 
something ; for I can now see plainly that Cromwell 
had not even the merit of being an embryo. As for 
my novels they are not worth a curse, but they pretend 
to nothing." 



Honore de Balzac. 45 

He judged himself too severely ; it is true that these 
early works contained as yet the mere germs of his 
talent, but he made such progress from one to another 
that he might have put his name to the last without 
injury to his coming reputation. Happily, he could 
pass quickly from grief to J03-, for the letters which 
followed are full of ga}~ety and high spirits. His 
novels are better paid and cost him less pains to 
write. 

" If you only knew how little trouble it is to me to 
plan these books, to head the chapters, and fill the 
pages ! You shall judge for }*ourself, however, because, 
now that your husband invites me, I shall certainly 
spend three good months with you this year." 

He lays a host of plans, he has a multitude of hopes ; 
he imagines himself rich and married. He begins to 
wish for wealth, but only as a means of success. He 
describes the wife he would like, and speaks of conjugal 
happiness in the tone of a man who has not yet med- 
itated on the Physiologie du mariage. He goes to 
Isle- Adam to stay with his friend, Monsieur de Villers. 
There he attends the funeral of a physician, such as he 
describes in the Medecin de Campagne, This man, 
whom he had known during his previous visits, the bene- 
factor of the neighborhood, loved and mourned by all, 
gave him the idea of that book. The man then buried 
became in after years the living Monsieur Benassis. 
Wherever he went he studied what he saw, — towns, vil- 
lages, country-places, and their inhabitants ; collecting 
words or speeches which revealed a character or painted 



46 Honore de Balzac. 

a situation. He called, rather slightingly, the scrap- 
book in which he kept these notes of what he saw and 
heard his ' ' meat-safe." 

But, rocked to sleep for a time by hope, he was soon 
awakened by sad reality. His novels not only did not 
make him rich, but they barely sufficed for his necessary 
expenses. The doubts and anxieties of his family were 
renewed. His parents talked of taking a stand. To 
have succeeded in getting his books printed at all was, 
however, a success, and showed unusual ability and a 
gift of fascination that was far from common ; for pub- 
lishers are long unattainable to the poor aspirant, who 
is usually rebuffed with the discouraging words, " You 
are unknown, and yet you wish me to publish your 
books." To have a name before writing is therefore 
the first problem to solve in this career, unless a man 
can enter the literary battle-field like a cannon-ball. 
Now my brother did not think his works had, as yet, 
that power of propulsion. Besides, he had no influence 
to aid him in the world of letters, neither had he any 
one to aid or to encourage him, except one school friend 
who afterwards entered the magistracy and who wrote 
Honore's first anonymous novel with him. Dreading 
lest he should be forced to accept the chains which were 
being forged for him, ashamed of the dependence in 
which he was kept in his own home, he resolved to at- 
tempt an enterprise which alone seemed to offer him a 
chance of freedom. This was in 1823, when my brother 
was nearly twenty-five years old. Here begin the dis- 
asters which led to all the troubles and misfortunes 
of his life. 



Honore de Balzac. 47 



CHAPTER III. 

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 

Balzac's childhood was divided thus : four years in 
the house of his peasant nurse, four 3-ears and one 
month in his own home, six years and two months in 
the seminaiy of Vendome without leaving it for a single 
day. His sister has told us of his sunny nature during 
the eight years the}' were together. Of the subsequent 
six 3'ears passed in that gray and gloomy institution 
she tells but three things : his eager longing for the 
familv visits ; the fact (which she states in positive 
terms) that the first part of Louis Lambert is Honore's 
own history in all its particulars ; and, thirdly, the 
condition in which the boy was returned to his parents. 
Balzac himself takes up the tale from his eleventh 3'ear. 
What voiceless sufferings must lie in the years from 
eight to eleven, during which the sunny little child was 
broken in to the stern rule and desolate loneliness from 
which there was no escape. Remembering Balzac's 
imagination, the mighty gift that was born in him, it is 
possible to form some idea of what his dawning soul 
endured in its first struggle with experience. 

We might suppose that the ties of family would have 
been weak in Balzac, exiled as he was in childhood 
and later from his home, where it is quite plain, though 



48 Honore de Balzac. 

not acknowledged by his sister or himself, that he 
was never understood or wiselj' treated. On the con- 
teuy, the spirit of filial reverence and affection which 
is so marked a trait in French character was never 
- stronger than in Balzac ; and the abstract principle 
of the Family is one of the bases on which he built his 
work. 

The dream) T little town of Vendome in Touraine was 
the site of the chief French college of the Oratorians, a 
fraternity instituted in Italj- in 1575 by Saint Philippe 
de Neri, and brought to France by Cardinal de Berulle 
in 1611. The object of this brotherhood was the edu- 
cation of youth, more especially that of preachers. To 
this original purpose, seems to have been added in 
Balzac's da} T that of a semi-military academy, sending 
a certain number of cadets to the army. When the 
Convention decreed the abolition of the teaching fra- 
ternities the Oratorians of Vendome quietly closed their 
buildings and dispersed themselves about the neighbor- 
hood. After the Revolution was over they returned 
and re-established the school under its former rules. 
On its register may be read this entry : " No. 460. 
Honore Balzac, aged eight years and one month. Has 
had the small-pox and is without infirmity. Tempera- 
ment sanguine ; easily excited ; subject to feverish 
attacks. Entered June 22, 1807. Left August 22, 
1813." 

Balzac's account of his life at this school is an in- 
valuable record. Here we see the first making of his 
spirit ; we see his mind beating its way out to the 
light, untrammelled by knowledge of the world, and con- 
scious of no restraint or limit. The same power of his 



Honore de Balzac. 49 

mind to sustain itself on its own pinions remained with 
him through life, but we find other explanations of it ; 
it was then a conscious power, affected by environment ; 
here it is that of the pure, uninfluenced spirit, opening 
itself to the knowledge of wisdom at that period of life 
when the human creature is in simple relation to the 
divine; for "can anything be nearer to God than 
genius in the heart of a child?" The following is an 
abridgment of his own account of his school years as 
given in Louis Lambert. 

Standing in the centre of the town on the little river 
Loir, which bathes its outer walls, the College is seen 
to be a vast inclosure of ancient brick and stone build- 
ings, unchanged since the period of their erection, and 
containing all the appurtenances necessary for an insti- 
tution of its kind, — chapel, theatre, infirmary, bake- 
house, gardens, and a system of irrigation and water 
supply. This college, the most important educational 
establishment in the middle provinces, derived its 
pupils from those provinces and from the colonies. 
The rules forbade vacations beyond the walls. Letters 
to parents were obligatory on certain daj's ; so was 
confession. Sins and affections were thus under strict 
supervision. All thing3 bore the stamp of monastic 
regularity. 

The two or three hundred pupils contained in the 
institution were divided into four sections : the Min- 
imes, the Petits, the Moyens, and the Grands^ the 
latter being the head class in rhetoric, philosophj*, spe- 
cial mathematics, physics, and chemistiy. Each section 
occupied a building of its own, with classrooms and a 
courtyard opening on a broad piece of ground leading 
4 



50 Honore de Balzac. 

to the refectorj', where the pupils took their meals to- 
gether. To ameliorate their lives, deprived as they 
were of all communication with the world without, and 
severed from famity pleasures, the Fathers allowed the 
boys to keep pigeons and to cultivate little gardens. 
They were also permitted to play cards and act dramas 
during the holidays ; a band of music belonged to the 
military section of the college, and a shop was set up 
on the common ground near the refectory, where the 
pupils could buy pens, ink and paper, balls, marbles, 
stilts, and knives, and other boyish treasures. 

To this unnatural life, parted from mother and sis- 
ters, alone among bo}'s and men, and aware that until 
his education was finished there would be no change in 
it even for a single daj', the child of eight was con- 
demned. Happily, he was passionately fond of read- 
ing (having already devoured all that came in his way 
in his father's house) and the college librarian allowed 
him to take such books as he liked, paying little or no 
attention to those he carried away with him, nor to 
those he read in the tranquil precincts of the library. 
Absorbed in the delights of this passion he neglected 
his studies, and composed poems which gave no prom- 
ise of future greatness, if we may judge by the follow- 
ing un wield j t line, the first of an epic on the Incas : 
O Inca ! roi infortune et mallieureux. 

This epic fell into the hands of his schoolmates, who 
dubbed him " Poet," in derision of the performance. 
But ridicule did not repress him. He continued to 
scribble sorry verses in spite of Monsieur Mareschal, 
the director, who told him the fable of the fledgling that 



HonorS de Balzac. 51 

fell out of the nest into man} 7 troubles, because it tried 
to fly before its wings were grown. All to no purpose, 
however ; he persisted in his desultory reading, and be- 
came the least assiduous, the laziest, dreamiest pupil in 
his division, and the oftenest punished. He was then 
twelve years old. George Sand records : " A friend of 
mine, who sat on the same bench with him, told me 
that he was a very absorbed child, rather heavy in ap- 
pearance, poor at his classics, and appearing stupid to 
his masters, — a great proof of either precocious genius 
or strong individuality, and so it seemed in the eyes of 
the person who told me." 

During the first months of his life at Vendome he 
fell a victim to a sort of nostalgia, the s\'mptoms of 
which were not perceived b w v the masters. Accustomed 
to the open air, to independence, to the care of friends, 
and to thinking and dreaming in the sunshine, it was 
very hard for him to bow to college rules, and to live 
within the four walls of a room where eighty lads were 
forced to sit erect and silent before their desks His 
senses were endowed with extreme delicacy, and he suf- 
fered greatly from this community of life. Exhalations, 
which poisoned the air and mingled with the other odors 
of a classroom that was often dirty, gave forth the 
fumes of a sort of humus which affected his sense of 
smell, a sense, he says, in closer relation than any other 
to the cerebral system, and which, if vitiated, must 
create invisible disturbance to the organs of thought. 
The loss of the pure country air he had hitherto breathed, 
the change in his habits, the discipline of the school, 
all combined to depress his vitality. He would sit for 
hours leaning his head upon his left hand, and gazing 



52 Honord de Balzac. 

into the courtyard, at the foliage of the trees or the 
clouds in the sk} T . He seemed to be stud3 T ing his les- 
sons, but from time to time the master, noticing his 
motionless pen, would call out: "You are doing 
nothing!" That fatal " 3-011 are doing nothing" was 
like a pin pricking his heart. 

He had no recreation, because of the "pensums" 
he was forced to write. The pensum was a vaiying 
number of lines to be copied during recess ; and the 
boy was so laden down with them that he did not have 
six entirety free days in two years. He brought these 
pensums upon him in a dozen different ways. His 
memory was so good that he never studied his lessons ; 
it sufficed him to hear his schoolmates recite the ap- 
pointed bit of French or Latin or even grammar, to be 
able to repeat it when his turn came. Sometimes, by 
ill-luck, the master would reverse the order and question 
Balzac first, and then he often did not know what the 
lesson was. He used to wait till the last moment to 
write his themes, and if he had a book to finish, or a 
re very to pursue, the theme was neglected, — fruitful 
source of pensums. 

Another of his trials was that of physical suffering. 
For want of motherly home-care, the Petits and the 
Minimes were covered with chilblains on their hands 
and feet. During the winters he never walked without 
severe pain. This he shared in common with others, 
for he records the fact that out of sixty scholars in his 
class scarcely ten were free from this torture. To add 
to it, no gloves were allowed to protect their chapped 
and bleeding hands. 

For neglected themes, lessons ill-learned, and boy- 



Honore de Balzac. 53 

ish pranks, the pensum sufficed ; but other offences, 
especially those of disrespect, real or imagined, to a 
master were punished with what was called " the 
ferule/' This was inflicted by a strip of leather, two 
inches wide, applied to the shrinking hands of the 
pupils with all the strength of an angry master. But 
there was still a third punishment greatly dreaded by 
the other pupils, but wiiich Balzac came to look on as a 
boon, for it gave him release from his lessons with soli- 
tude and the freedom to dream. It was called by the 
curious name of the culotte de bois, and consisted in 
being locked up in a cell, or cage, six feet square, the 
wooden sides of which had a grating round the top to 
let in the air. Here he was sometimes imprisoned for 
over a month. The old porter, pere Verdun, whose 
duty it was to lock the recalcitrant scholars into these 
cages, was still living, at the age of eighty-four, some 
time after Balzac's death. The old man remembered 
" those great black eyes," and also the fact that he 
sometimes took him to a prison of greater severity, a 
gloomy turreted building, detached from the main col- 
lege and standing at the very edge of the Loir. 1 

It may be very short-sighted of us to regret these 
trials of the child's life, which strengthened the wings 
of his spirit and developed an inward power of which he 
might never have been fully conscious without them. 

In the solitude of those cells, not greater though 
more tangible than the solitude of mind in which he 
lived, reading was impossible, and the time was spent 
chiefly in mental arguments or in recalling curious facts 

1 See the illustration, from a drawing made on the spot by 
A. Queyroy, for Champfleury's pamphlet, " Balzac au. College." 



54 Honors de Balzac. 

to illustrate them. Thoughts came to him by intuition 
(for he could not as }*et. have had insight) of which the 
following may stand as specimens : — 

" Happily for me there are joyful moments when the 
walls of the classroom disappear, and I am away — in 
the meadows. What delight to float upon thought like 
a bird on the wing ! " 

"To think is to see. All knowledge rests on de- 
duction, — a chink of vision by which we descend 
from cause to effect, returning upward from effect to 
cause." 

"I feel, sometimes, that strange fantastic sufferings 
are going on within me in spite of myself. For in- 
stance, when I think strongly on the sensation the blade 
of nry penknife would cause me if thrust into my flesh 
I instantly experience a sharp pain as though I had 
really cut myself. An idea causing physical suffer- 
ing ! what is to be made of that? " 

It is well to remember that these speculations (and 
others like them not given here) were made and written 
down before the physiologists of the last half-centurr 
had explained or even perceived them. 

" When I first read of the battle of Austerlitz I saw 
it all. I heard the cannon and the shouts of the 
soldiers ; I smelt the powder ; 1 heard the tramp of 
horses and the cries of men. I saw the plain where the 
armies clashed together as though I stood on the heights 
of Santon. The sight was awful, — like a page out of 
the Apocalypse." 

" How is it that men have reflected so little on the 
events of sleep which prove to them that the}- have a 
double life? Is there not a dawning science in that 



Honore de Balzac. 5b 

phenomenon ? If it is not the germ of a science it cer- 
tainly reveals extraordinary powers in man ; it shows a 
frequent disunion of our two natures, — a fact round 
which m}^ mind is constantly revolving." 

Reading was a hunger of his soul which nothing ap- 
peased. He devoured books of all sorts ; he even 
found unspeakable pleasure in reading dictionaries in 
default of other books. The analysis of a word, its 
conformation, its histoiy, were to him a text for rever}'. 
"Often," he said, "I have made delightful journej's 
embarked on a single word. Starting from Greece I 
have reached Rome, and traversed the modern eras. 
What a glorious book might be written on the life and 
adventures of a word ! But who can explain to us 
philosophically the transition from sensation to thought, 
from thought to word, from the word to its hieroglyph- 
ical expression, from hieroglyphs to alphabet, from the 
alphabet to written language?" 

A strong inclination led him to the study of mysti- 
cism. " Abyssus abyssum" he said, " our mind is an 
abyss which delights in depths." This taste for the 
" things of heaven" (a phrase of his own), this mens 
divinior, was due perhaps to the first books he had 
read. The Old and New Testaments had fallen into his 
hand in his father's library before he was seven years 
old. Was he merely fascinated by the romantic charm 
of those poems of the Orient, or did the child's soul in 
its first innocence sympathize with the sublime piety 
which hands divine have shed within that book ? How- 
ever this may be, he had since read the writings of 
Saint Teresa and Madame Guyon, and they were to 
him a continuation of the Bible and the first food of 



56 HonorS de Balzac. 

his adult intelligence. This study uplifted his heart 
and purified it, and gave him a thirst for the Divine 
nature. Thanks to these first impressions he continued 
pure in thought throughout his college life, and this 
noble virginity of the senses had the effect, necessarily, 
of increasing the faculties of his mind. 

Out of his mystical studies he formed for himself a 
theory of angels, which ma} T be summed up as follows : 
There are within us two distinct beings, — an inner and 
an outer being. The individual in whom the inward be- 
ing has triumphed over the outward being is an angel. 
If a man desires to obey his true calling he must nourish 
the angelic nature within him. If, failing to possess this 
vision of his destin}', he lets the lower tendencies pre- 
dominate, his natural powers pass into the service of 
his material being, and the angel within him slowlj" 
perishes. On the other hand, if he nourishes the in- 
ward angel with the essences that accord with it, the 
soul rises above matter, endeavors to get free from it, 
and when death comes the angel alone survives and 
true life begins. Although created beings are appar- 
ently all of one nature here below, they are in fact 
divided, according to the perfection of their inward 
being, into separate spheres whose sayings and ethics 
are alien to each other. 

He loved to plunge into that world of mystery, in- 
visible to the senses, and exercise his mind on the toil 
of thought. To him pure love, the love of which we 
dream in youth, was the coming together of two angelic 
natures. Nothing could equal the ardor with which he 
longed to meet a woman-angel. 

The apparent indolence and torpidity in which he 



Honore de Balzac. 57 

lived, his neglect of school duty, and the repugnance 
he showed to themes and pensums, together with the 
frequent punishments he incurred, gave him the unchal- 
lenged reputation of being the idlest and most incorri- 
gible pupil in the school. The masters thought slight- 
ingly of his capacity, and pronounced him an ordinary 
scholar and a dull boy. It is noticeable that Balzac 
does not resent or greatly complain of the hardships 
and punishments he was forced to endure ; he makes 
no claim to pity on that score ; on the contraiy, he 
seems to accept them as justly due in a measure to his 
idle ways. The recognition of authority was a tenet of 
his faith in after years, and he appears to have prac- 
tised it in his earliest experience ; possibly that experi- 
ence may have inculcated the doctrine in his mind. 

It was during his last year at Vendome (he was then 
fourteen) that he wrote the Treatise on the Will which 
Father Haugoult, the master, or regent as he was 
called, confiscated and destroyed in his anger at find- 
ing it in place of a theme which ought to have been 
written, saying as he did so: "So this is the rubbish 
for which you neglect your lessons ! " 

It does not come within the scope of this memoir to 
give a descriptive account of that treatise, the loss of 
which Balzac always regretted, believing that it gave a 
true picture of his mind at that period of his life. He 
endeavored to replace it in Louis Lambert ; and has 
no doubt done so faithfully in the main, with some 
assistance from his mature mind. 1 

1 The reader is referred to the American translation of Louis 
Lambert. It is preceded by an introduction by Mr. George Fred- 
eric Parsons, which develops and makes intelligible to a patient 



58 Honore de Balzac. 

Six months after the confiscation of the treatise Bal- 
zac left college. He was attacked by feverish symp- 
toms which clung to him persistently and produced at 
times a sort of coma, caused, as Balzac himself said, 
by "a congestion of ideas," and also, we may add, by 
the accumulated suffering and unhealthiness of his 
life. The head of the college, Monsieur Mareschal, 
wrote to his parents, and his mother promptly removed 
him from the school and brought him home. 

No sooner did the boy return to a life of freedom 
and natural enjoyment than he recovered his health ; a 
strong proof of the vigor of his constitution and also of 
his mind. In all estimates of Balzac's nature attention 
must be paid to the fact that he was eminently sound 
and healthy in mind and bod}-. Though his spirit rose 
to regions that could be reached only by intuition, and 
ruminated over problems the studj T of which we asso- 
ciate with fragility of body and aloofness from the 
things of life, he was at the same time, and quite as 
thoroughly, a man with human instincts, loving life and 
enjoj'ing it. In this lies, no doubt, one of the secrets 
of his power. It was a part of the many-sidedness of 
his genius ; it enabled him to actually live and have his 
being in the men and women whom he evoked from the 
depths and heights of human nature. His temperament 
was, above all things, genial, and his humor gay. No 
pressure of worldly anxiety and debt, no crushing toil, 

reader the thought of a book which contains divine wisdom, but 
is so difficult of comprehension as to need a guide. The day will 
come, no doubt, when its difficulties will have vanished before the 
world's clearer knowledge. At present this book, written fifty 
years ago, is still in advance of the times. 



HonorS de Balzac. 59 

no hidden grief with which the man, like the child in his 
cell, was acquainted, could destroy that healthy cheer- 
fulness or prevent the rebound into hearty and even 
jovial gayety. " Robust " is the word that seems to suit 
him on the material side of his nature, applying even 
to his mental processes. He was gifted with a strong 
common-sense, which guided his judgment on men and 
circumstances ; though at times, it is true, his imagina- 
tion interfered with his judgment, as in the famous trip 
to Sardinia, of which his sister will tell us, and in the 
harmless eccentricities related (with a grain of truth 
and much exaggeration) in the rather froth}- and self- 
conscious writings of his literary associates. We may 
remark, in passing, that nearly all the contemporaries 
(except a few choice minds) who rushed into print to 
tell the public what they knew of Balzac, seem to have 
been thinking more of themselves than of him. They 
have done him some passing injury, but in judging of 
Balzac we must always remember that he was a man 
not for posterity only, but for the posterUy of ages. 
Therefore he needs no controversy about him. It is 
sufficient to state such facts as can be proved, and 
draw such natural deductions as may seem just and 
reasonable, — making no attempt to gainsay the foolish 
things that have been written of him. So with his 
books ; each generation will have its own interpreta- 
tion to put upon them, for they have their message to 
all. Let the present day throw its best light upon his 
work, and leave insufficient criticism to wear itself out, 
— already this is happening. 

The lad's health restored, his mind, which had hith- 
erto been guided by the intuitions of a virgin spirit and 



60 Honor e de Balzac. 

fed on abstract thought, now added to the mental 
wealth thus acquired a registration of the beings and 
events among which his new freedom cast him, amass- 
ing materials which he stored away in his vast memory. 
This was unconsciously done on his part, but we who 
know the use he made of them can look back and see 
the process. Here, then, were the sources of his train- 
ing for his ultimate work. 

His fifteenth 3'ear was spent at home among the beau- 
ties of his dear Touraine. " Do not ask me why I 
love Touraine," he says ; "I love it as an artist loves 
art ; I love it less than I love you, but without Tou- 
raine perhaps I should not now be living." To this 
year we owe the inspiration of those exquisite descrip- 
tions of scenery in La Grenadiere and the Lys dans 
la Vallee. Perhaps it may be true to say that the 
greatest charm of Balzac's work lies in his pictures of 
nature, — wayside sketches, as it were, never forced or 
written to order, simply the necessary descriptions of 
the scenes through which the reader has to pass as the 
story leads him. 1 

At the close of the 3*ear 1814, when the family moved 
to Paris and took a house in the rue du Roi-Dore, in the 
Marais, Honore was again sent from home to schools 
in the neighborhood, where he remained finishing his 
education till the autumn of 1816, when he was seven- 
teen and a half years old. Within that period he wit- 

1 Among them may be specified the description of the Lac de 
Bourget in the Peau de Chagrin ; the beginning of the Medecin de 
Campagne ; the park in Les Poysans ; that wonderful picture of 
the desert in Une Passion dans le desert ; but above and before all, 
the opening of Seraphita. 



Honore de Balzac, 61 

nessed great national events : the return from Elba, the 
Hundred Days, the presence of the Allied Armies, and 
the Restoration. We can fancy what an effect these 
scenes must have had on an imagination like his, — but 
indeed we need not fancy it, for we can read it in his 
books. Surely he knew the old hero of the Beresina in 
the flesh, and the story of the Emperor was not altogether 
the work of his brain ; and he must, be} r ond a doubt, have 
been present at that last review in the Carrousel, which 
he thus describes in the language of an eye-witness : — 
"The expectant multitude throbbed with enthusi- 
asm. France was about to bid farewell to Napoleon 
on the eve of a campaign of which all present, even the 
humblest citizen, foresaw the dangers. The French 
empire hung in the balance, — to be or not to be. That 
thought appeared to fill all minds, of soldiers and citi- 
zens alike, as they stood together silently in the great 
inclosure above which hovered the genius and the eagles 
of Napoleon. Army and people seemed to be taking 
farewell of each other, — possibly an eternal farewell. 
All hearts, even those most hostile to the Emperor, 
breathed ardent pra} r ers to heaven for the nation's 
glory. Men who were weary of the struggle between 
France and Europe laid aside their hatreds as they 
passed beneath the arch of triumph, acknowledging in 
their souls that in the hour of danger Napoleon was 
France. The clock of the palace struck the half-hour. 
Suddenly the hum of voices ceased. The silence grew 
so deep that the voice of a child was heard. The spec- 
tators, who seemed to live by their e} T es only, became 
aware of the clank of spurs and swords echoing among 
the columns of the palace gateway. 



62 Honore de Balzac, 

"A small man, rather fat, dressed in a green uni- 
form with white small-clothes and top-boots, suddenly 
appeared, wearing on his head a three-cornered hat in 
which la}' a spell almost as potent as that of the man 
himself. The broad ribbon of the legion of honor 
floated on his breast ; a small sword hung at his side. 
The man was seen by every eye, instantly, in all parts 
of the great square. The drums beat ; the bands 
played the first notes of a martial air, which was caught 
up and repeated by all the instruments from the softest 
flute to the kettledrums. All hearts quivered at the 
warlike call ; the colors dipped ; the soldiers presented 
arms with a simultaneous motion which moved each 
gun throughout the whole Carrousel. Words of com- 
mand flew through the ranks like echoes. Cries of 
' Long live the Emperor ! ' came from the multitude ; 
the whole mass swayed and quivered and shook. Na- 
poleon had mounted his horse. That action had given 
life to the silent assemblage, voice to the instruments, 
movement to the flags and the eagles, emotion to all 
faces. The high stone walls of the palace seemed to 
cry with the multitude, ' Long live the Emperor ! ' It 
was not a human thing; there was magic in it, — the 
phantom of divine power ; or, to speak more truly, the 
fleeting image of a fleeting reign. The man thus sur- 
rounded with so much love, enthusiasm, devotion, 
prayer, for whom the sun had driven every cloud from 
the sk t y, sat motionless on his horse, three feet in ad- 
vance of the dazzling escort that followed him, with the 
grand marshal to right and his chamberlain to left of him. 
In the midst of this mighty emotion of which he was the 
object, not a feature of his face gave token of feeling. 



HonorS de Balzac. 63 

" My God, yes," an old grenadier was heard to sa}' : 
"it was always so; under fire at Wagram, among 
the dead in the Moskowa, he was quiet as a lamb — 
yes, that 's he ! " 

When Balzac finished his legal studies, which lasted 
from 1816 to 1820, he was twenty-one years old. The 
Restoration was fully accomplished, and during those 
3'ears he saw something of it socially through his famih 7 , 
though not in the degree to which the fame of his books 
afterwards introduced him. His political opinions (of 
which more will be said later) leaned to those of the 
old regime, but it was impossible for a mind so many- 
sided in knowledge and insight to be partisan, and his 
politics rested chiefly on certain broad lines of prin- 
ciple. His absolute impartiality, which was not that of 
an easy-going nature, but rather that of an ability to 
see and judge all sides deliberately, is evident in his 
books. All opinions are brought forward in the human 
comedy, but it would be hard to find a partisan bias for 
or against any of them ; and due notice of this should 
be taken in reading his works. In fact, his admira- 
tion, and even his sympath}-, were often given where 
his judgment saw and stated essential error, as in the 
case of Napoleon. Wherever he brings him on the 
scene it is as a mighty presence ; and certainly few 
things have ever been written in an} T language so vivid, 
so impetuous, or so full of a certain inspiration as the 
Story of the Emperor in the Medecin de Campagne. 

But the fateful da}' came when he was to choose his 
career, or rather when a career was to be chosen and 
forced upon him. His sister has told us the stoiy, but 
here, as elsewhere in her narrative, we must read be- 



64 Honore de Balzac. 

tween the lines. It is plain that his father (who, 
we should remember, was fifty-two years old when 
Honore was born), notwithstanding his own indepen- 
dence, and his demand for liberty of thought and action, 
denied that liberty to his son. He was totally ignorant 
of the lad's real powers ; probably he took his opinion 
of him from the Oratorian report: "a poor scholar 
and a dull boy ; " and there is evidence in Balzac's let- 
ters that this was the estimation in which his family 
held him for man}* } T ears. " Will the}* still call me an 
incapable and a do-nothing?" he said after several of 
his great works had been written. Madame de Balzac, 
a stirring woman, seems not onry to have shared her 
husband's views, but also, at times, to have instigated 
them. At an}- rate, the financial injury the father had 
entailed upon his children by the purchase of an 
annuity made it, according to French parental ideas, of 
the utmost consequence that the son should go to work 
in some way that might speedily bring wealth into the 
family. The profession of notary is one of the most 
lucrative, with the advantage of little risk, and the op- 
portunity of so placing his son fell, almost unsought, 
into the father's hand. 

Confronted with the family opinion of his mental 
capacit} T , and with their reasonable worldly expecta- 
tions of him, we see the dawning consciousness in the 
youth who had written the Treatise on the Will of a 
higher vocation, of a thirst to exercise some as yet 
unknown but instinctive power of his own spirit, — ■ 
held in check, however, by the filial reverence of a 
French son. The child had borne his trial in the 
wooden cage ; this was the trial of the youth. His 



HonorS de Balzac. 65 

sister has told us how it ended joyfully in freedom and 
a garret. 

We can fancy now what that garret was to him, — 
the first freedom of his life ! freedom to make himself 
that which his inner being told him he could be. It is 
necessary to bear in mind this inward consciousness of 
faith in himself; a faith, however inspired, which asked 
no support from others ; which bore him triumphantly 
through something harder to endure and to conquer 
than doubts of friends, incessant debt, or the gigantic 
toil of after years, — through the discovery of his own 
incapacity. For the strange fact remains that he proved 
at first incapable in his chosen vocation. With all the 
wealth of observation, imagination, intuition, and power 
of philosophical thought that were even then at his 
command, he could not construct or shape his work nor 
bring his style into proper form. It seems incredible, 
but his sister vouches for it as true, that he wrote and 
published forty volumes before he could write one to 
which he was willing to put his name : "Ah! sister," 
he cries, " what a fall for my glorious hopes!" We 
have only to pause and think upon these facts to per- 
ceive the force of his struggle and the splendor of the 
courage that carried him through it. 

He has left a more interesting and valuable picture of 
his life in the rue Lesdiguieres than that contained in 
his merry letters to his sister. It is interesting to notice, 
by the way, that his father insisted that Honore should 
live there incognito, and that friends should be told he 
was staying with a cousin at Alby ; so that in case of 
failure his literary attempt might not be made known. 
Perhaps this command of his father was the origin of 



66 Honore de Balzac. 

his much talked-of habit of disappearing for months to 
write in solitude, during which time his friends could 
reach him only through a system of pass- words. 

"I was then living," he says, addressing the lady 
to whom he dedicated Facino Cane, "in a little street 
which you probably do not know, the rue Lesdiguieres. 
Love of knowledge had driven me to a garret, where I 
worked during the night, passing my days in the library 
of Monsieur, which was near by. 1 I lived frugally, tak- 
ing upon me the conditions of monastic life, so essential 
to workers. I seldom walked for pleasure, even when 
the weather was fine. One sole passion drew me away 
from my studies, but even that was a form of study. I 
walked the streets to observe the manners and ways of 
the faubourg, to study its inhabitants and learn their 
characters. Ill-dressed as the workmen themselves, and 
quite as indifferent to the proprieties, there was nothing 
about me to put them on their guard. I mingled in 
their groups, watched their bargains, and heard their 
disputes at the hour when their clay's work ended. The 
facult}' of observation had become intuitive with me. 
I could enter the souls of others, all the while conscious 
of their bodies — or rather, I grasped external details 
so thoroughly that my mind instantly passed beyond 
them ; I possessed the facuhry of living the life of the 
individual on whom I exercised my observation, and of 
substituting myself for him, like the dervish in the 
Arabian Nights who assumed the body and soul of 
those over whom he pronounced certain words. 

"Often, between eleven o'clock and midnight, when 

1 Afterwards called the Bibliotheque de 1' Arsenal ; but he 
gives it the Bourbon name. 



Honore de Balzac. 67 

I met some workman and his wife returning home from 
the Ambigu-Comique I amused nryself by following 
them. The worthy pair usually talked first of the play 
they had just seen ; then, from one thing to another, 
they came to their own affairs ; the mother would, per- 
haps, be dragging her child along by the hand, paying 
no attention to its complaints or inquiries ; husband and 
wife reckoned up their gains ; told what they expected 
to make on the morrow, and spent that sum in fancy in 
a dozen different ways. Then the}' dropped into house- 
hold details, groaned over the excessive cost of pota- 
toes, the increased price of fuel, and talked of the 
strong remonstrance they intended to make to the 
baker. Their discussions often grew heated, and each 
side betrayed his and her character in picturesque lan- 
guage. As I listened to these persons I imbibed their 
life ; I felt their ragged clothing on my back ; my feet 
walked in their broken shoes ; their desires, their wants 
passed into my soul, — or my soul passed into theirs. 
It was the dream of a waking man. I grew angrj 7 , 
as they did, against some foreman who ill-used them, 
against annoying customers who obliged them to call 
many times before they could get their monej\ To quit 
my own life, to become some other individual through 
the excitation of a moral faculty, and to play this game 
at will, was the relaxation of my studious hours. 

u To what have I owed this gift ? Is it second- 
sight? Can it be one of those faculties the abuse of 
which leads to insanity? I have never sought to dis- 
cover the causes of this power; I only know that I 
possess it and use it. I must tell you that ever since 
I became aware of this faculty, I have decomposed 



68 HonorS de Balzac. 

the elements of those heterogeneous masses called the 
People, and I have analyzed them in a manner that 
enables me to appraise both their good and evil 
qualities." 

Balzac's mind dealt with more than one philosophical 
problem of which his own life was a startling illustra- 
tion ; but he was not introspective in a selfish and 
personal wa} T , or he might have thought himself under 
the ban of some pursuing fate. For all through his 
life — even to death — no sooner had he gained a van- 
tage ground than it was cut from under his feet. He 
was now to lose his brief independence. Only fifteen 
months of his two }*ears opportunity had expired, but 
the failure of his tragedy, and the deprivations he had 
borne must have seemed to his parents to justify their 
hope that "a little suffering would bring him to sub- 
mission." He was not allowed to remain in his garret, 
but was taken home to Villeparisis, eighteen miles from 
Paris and from libraries, — this, we must remember, 
was before the days of railroads. Here he had no soli- 
tude and no tranquil time for studj^ ; on the contrary, 
he was surrounded by disturbing domestic elements. 
But, cheerful as ever, and "good to live with," as 
Madame Surville says of him, his letters of this period 
make no complaint. 

Still, with all his courage, his mind seems to have 
misgiven him as to the possibility of working for his 
vocation under such circumstances. He asked his 
father to make him an allowance of fifteen hundred 
francs a }'ear and let him live in Paris. We smile at 
the sum, which was scarcely more then than it would 
be now ; for the times of the Restoration were costly. 



Honor e de Balzac. 69 

His request was refused. This refusal appears to have 
been the turning-point of his outward career. Had his 
request been granted, it is certain that the circumstances 
of that career would have been very different from what 
they were ; so far as we can now judge, the incubus 
that lay upon his whole life and was an agent in his 
death, though not the cause of it, would never have 
come to him. 



70 Honore de Balzac. 



CHAPTER IV. 

his sister's narrative continued. 

Many persons are unaware that ray brother spent as 
much mind and energy in struggling against misfortune 
as in writing the Comedie Humaine, that work which, 
however it may be judged, satisfied the most ardent 
desire of his life and gave him fame. Those who were 
in the secret of his life and trials ask themselves, with 
as much compassion as respect, how it was that a man 
so weighed down could find the time, the physical 
strength, and above all, the moral force to sustain such 
enormous labor. If his parents had granted him the 
modest income of fifteen hundred francs which was all 
he asked to enable him to win his first success, what 
adversities would have been spared to him and also to 
his family ; what a fortune he would then have made 
with his pen, of which he knew the value. Energetic 
and patient, like all genius, he would have gone back 
to solitude where that modest allowance would have 
sufficed for his wants ; for, extreme in all his desires, 
he needed either a palace or a garret ; lover of luxury 
that he was, he knew how to do without it. "A gar- 
ret has its poesy," he often said to me. It was only 
where poes}' did not exist that he was ill at ease. 

But the insoluble question remains : Does not mis- 
fortune develop talent ? Would Balzac, rich and happy, 



Honore de Balzac. 71 

have become the great inquisitor of humanity ; would 
he have surprised its secrets, laid bare its feelings, and 
judged its misery from so vast a height? That clear- 
ness of vision granted to superior minds, which enables 
them to seize all aspects of an idea, is it ever acquired 
unless at the cost of privation and the experience of 
suffering? Yet such clearness of vision itself has a 
fatal side, for many who cannot comprehend these 
mighty faculties (and their number is large) sometimes 
cast doubts upon the moral worth of those who possess 
them. The dry details that follow, which I shall en- 
deavor to abridge as much as possible, are necessary 
to explain the misfortunes of Balzac's life, — misfor- 
tunes so little or so imperfectly known that even his 
friends have sometimes attributed them to follies which 
he did not commit. 

Whenever Honore went to Paris he stayed in the 
former apartment of the family in the Marais, which 
his father still retained. There he became intimate 
with a neighbor to whom he related his fears of being 
forced into a profession he disliked. This friend, a 
man of business, advised him to seek for some good 
enterprise which should make him independent, and he 
offered to supply the funds. Balzac, transformed into 
a speculator, was advised to begin as a publisher of 
books, and he accordingly did so. He was the first to 
think of publishing compact editions (which have since 
enriched so many libraries), and he brought out in 
one volume the complete works of Moliere and also of 
La Fontaine. He carried on the two publications at 
the same time, so greatly did he fear that one or the 
other might be snatched from him by competition. 



72 ^Honore de Balzac. 

Though these editions did not succeed, it was onlj T be- 
cause their publisher, unknown to the trade, was not 
sustained by the fraternity, who refused to sell or to 
receive his books. The sum lent to the enterprise did 
not suffice to pa} T for wide advertising which might per- 
haps have brought purchasers ; the editions therefore 
were completely unknown ; at the end of a 3-ear not 
twenty copies had been sold ; and to escape paying 
further rent for the warehouse in which they were 
stored, my brother sold the whole for the price, by 
weight, of the fine paper it had cost him so much to 
print. 

Instead of making money on this first enterprise, 
Honore was left in debt. It was the opening wedge to 
that long series of such experiences which were eventu- 
ally to make him so wise in judging of men and things. 
In after years he would not have attempted to publish 
books under such conditions ; he would have known 
the probable failure of such an enterprise. But experi- 
ence is never foreseen. 

The friend who furnished the funds, having lost the 
security for his loan, and being anxious that my brother 
should find some business which would give him a 
chance to pay off the debt, took him to one of his rela- 
tives who was making a fine fortune in the printing 
business. Honore made due inquiries, sought and ob- 
tained the best information, and finally became so 
enthusiastic over this industry that he determined to 
become a printer. Books were always his chief attrac- 
tion. He did not renounce his intention of writing, 
however ; for he remembered Richardson, who became 
rich through printing and writing both, and he dreamed 



Honor e de Balzac. 73 

of new Clarissas issuing from his press. My brother's 
creditor, pleased with this determination, encouraged it, 
and took upon himself to obtain the consent of our 
parents and the necessary money to start the enter- 
prise. He succeeded ; my father made over to Honore, 
as a portion of his inheritance, the capital of the in- 
come for which he had asked as a maintenance while 
he should give himself to literature. 1 

Honore now took into partnership a very clever fore- 
man, whom he had remarked in a printing-office at the 
time his first novels were published. This young man, 
who was married and the father of a family, inspired 
him with confidence, but, unfortunately, he brought to 
the partnership nothing more than his knowledge of 
typography. This knowledge was, of course, lacking 
to my brother, who thought that the zeal and activity 
of his partner, combined with experience, were equiva- 
lent to capital. Printing licenses were very costly 
under Charles X. ; when fifteen thousand francs was 
paid for the license, and the necessary material had 
been purchased, there remained but little money to 
meet the current expenses of the work. But my brother 
was not alarmed ; youth is always so sanguine of lucky 
chances ! The young partners installed themselves 
-gayly in the rue des Marais Saint-Germain, and ac- 
cepted all customers who came to them. Payments, 
however, were slow in coming, and did not balance with 
the expenses ; pressure began to be felt. A splendid 
opportunity now offered to unite a type foundry with 
the printing-office. It promised such profits, according 
to competent authorities whom Honore consulted, that 

1 The sum is elsewhere stated to have been 30,000 francs. 



74 Honore de Balzac. 

he did not hesitate to purchase it. He hoped, by unit- 
ing the two enterprises to obtain either a third asso- 
ciate with means, or a loan. He did his best in these 
directions, but all efforts failed, for the securities given 
to his first creditor had of course the first claim, and 
brought all negotiations to an end, 

My brother, with bankruptcy looming in the future, 
passed through a period of anguish which he never for- 
got, and which compelled him once more to appeal to 
his parents. My father and mother saw the gravit} 7 of 
the situation, and came to his assistance ; but after 
some months of continual sacrifice, fearing that their 
ruin might follow that of their son, they refused to fur- 
nish more money, — at the very moment when, per- 
haps, prosperity was at hand. This is the history of 
nearly all commercial disasters. 

Honore, unable to convince his parents that a fortu- 
nate result was close at hand, now attempted to sell out ; 
but his unfortunate position had become known, and the 
offers made were so insufficient that by accepting them 
he would have to lose all except the honor of his name. 
However, to avoid an imminent failure, which might 
have killed his old father and blasted his own young 
life, he made over the foundry and printing-office to 
friends for the price offered to him. In so doing he 
secured the future of that friend ; for his judgment 
proved to have been sound, and a fortune was made out 
of the foundry alone. The price obtained being insuffi- 
cient to pay the whole of the pressing debts, my mother 
advanced what money was needed for them. Honore 
retired from the business weighed down by obligations, 
— our mother being one of his chief creditors. 



Honore de Balzac. 75 

It was now the close of the year 1827; our parents 
had sold their country-house at Villeparisis, and were 
living near me at Versailles, where Monsieur Surville 
was stationed as engineer of the department of the 
Seine-et-Oise. Honore, then nearly twenty-nine years 
of age, possessed nothing but debts, and his pen with 
which to pay them, — that pen, the value of which was 
still unrecognized. Worse still, every one regarded 
him as "incapable," — a fatal epithet which deprives a 
man of all support, and often completes the shipwreck 
of the unfortunate victim. This verdict was in direct 
denial of the sure and rapid judgment he possessed of 
men and things, — a denial which exasperated him far 
more than that of his talent, which continued to echo 
about him long after he had given brilliant proofs to 
the contrary. Certain of his friends undoubtedly 
troubled him more than his numerous enemies. Even 
after the publication of Louis Lambert and the 
Medecin de Campagne they said to him: "Come, 
Balzac, when are you going to give us some really fine 
work?" In their eyes he was a trifler, a mere writer of 
tales, not a " serious man," — a term which impresses 
the common run of minds. Had he written some 
weighty book, so learned that few could understand it, 
they would have felt respect for him. And yet these 
very persons, inconsistent with themselves, while they 
deplored the frivolity of my brother's works, accused 
him of presumption when he touched upon grave mat- 
ters in his " little books " and lectured him paternally. 

"Why meddle with philosophical or governmental 
questions?" they said to him; "leave that to meta- 
physicians and economists. You are a man of imagina- 



76 HonorS de Balzac. 

tion, — we all admit that; don't go outside of your 
vocation. A novelist is not obliged to be a learned 
man or a legislator." 

Such speeches, repeated under many forms, irritated 
him greatly ; then he would turn with indignation on 
himself for being wounded by those who did not under- 
stand his powers, and his anger redoubled. "Must I 
die," he said bitterly, " to let them know what I am 
worth ? " 

And }'et such blindness was not surprising. Those 
who knew the child long saw him in the man ; and it is 
so difficult to admit superiority in one whom we have 
alwa} T s ruled that when forced to grant him some one 
special facult}' we hasten to deny him all others. Be- 
sides, his friends argued, is not one such faculty enough 
for a man ? how many men have none at all ! Did 
Honore pretend to universal genius? Such audacity 
deserved repression. These friends did not spare him ; 
and it was easy for them to persuade others that with 
such an imagination as my brother possessed he could 
have no judgment. The union of the two qualities is, 
doubtless, exceptionally rare, and Honore's two com- 
mercial disasters seemed to justifj" this verdict. If I 
seem to attach importance to opinions which have none 
whatever to-day, it is because they were thorns in the 
side of him whose life I am relating. Continually 
wounded by such injustice, my brother would not stoop 
to explain or defend his ideas and actions, which it 
was now the custom to blame without endeavoring to 
understand them ; he went his way alone towards his 
goal, without encouragement, without support, — a way 
strewn with the rocks and thorns of his two disasters. 



Honore de Balzac. 77 

When he attained that goal, that is to say, when 
fame was his, many there were to cry aloud : "What 
genius ! I foresaw it ! " But Balzac was no longer 
here to laugh at such palinodes, or to enjo}^ their tardy 
reparation. 

These memories have led me too far, and I return now 
to the } T ear 1827, the time at which my brother left the 
printing-office and hired a room in the rue de Tournon. 1 
Monsieur de la Touche was his neighbor. He became 
attached to my brother, bat the friendship soon died 
out, and he was afterwards among his bitterest enemies. 
Honore was then writing Les Chouans, the first book to 
which he put his name. Overwhelmed with work he 
no longer went to see his family at Versailles. Our 
parents complained of his neglect ; and I wrote to 
warn him of their feelings. My letter must have 
reached him in a moment of great weariness, for he, so 
patient and so gentle, answered sharply : — 

Paris, 1827. 

"Your letter has given me two detestable days and 
two detestable nights. I have thought over my justifi- 
cation point b}^ point, as Mirabeau did his memorandum 
to his father, and I am incensed in so doing. 1 shall 
not write it ; I have not the time, sister, and besides, I 
do not feel that I am wrong. . . . 

"I am blamed for the furniture of my room ; but 
every piece of it belonged to me before my catastrophe. 
I have not bought a single thing. Those blue cambric 
hangings about which such complaint is made were in 
my bed-chamber at the printing-office. La Touche and 

1 His debts at this time, as he mentions in a letter, amounted 
to 120,000 francs. 



78 Honor S de Balzac. 

I nailed them up to cover an old paper which must 
otherwise have been changed. My books are my tools, 
I cannot sell them. Taste, the thing that makes nry 
room harmonious, is not bought or sold (unfortunately 
for the rich). But, even so, I care so little for what I 
have that if m} 7 creditors were to put me, secretly, into 
Sainte-Pelagie, I should be happier than I am now ; 
living would cost me nothing, and I could not be more a 
prisoner than toil is making me. The postage of a 
letter, the use of an omnibus are expenses I cannot 
allow myself ; I do not go out, to save the wear and tear 
of clothes. Is that plain enough for you ? 

"Do not compel me therefore to make those trips, 
those visits, which are impossible under my circum- 
stances. Remember that I have nothing left but time 
and labor with which to make my way ; I have no money 
to meet even the smallest expenses. Think how my 
pen is never out of my hand, and 30U will not have the 
heart to require me to write letters. How can one write 
with a wear}' brain and a tortured soul ? I should only 
grieve you, and wiry should I do that? You don't 
understand that before my da} T, s work begins I some- 
times have seven or eight business-letters to answer. 

"Fifteen days more will see me through the Chou-. 
ans / till then, no Honore ; you might as well disturb 
a founder when the metal is flowing. I am satisfied I 
have done no wrong, dear sister ; if you were to make 
me think I had, my brain would give way. If my 
father should be ill 3'ou will of course send me word. 
You know that no human consideration would then 
keep me from him. 

" Sister, I must live without asking anything of any 



Honore de Balzac. 79 

one, — live to work that I may pa} T mj 7 debts to all. 
When the Chouans is finished I will bring it out to 
you ; but I do not wish any one to sa}' a word, good or 
bad, to me about it ; a writer's own family and friends 
are incapable of judging him. Thanks, dear champion, 
whose generous voice defends my motives. Shall I live 
to pay the debts of my heart ? " 

A few days later I received another letter which I 
cop} T , because it shows his nature. Two little screens 
were wanted for the decoration of the room which had 
already brought reproaches upon him. He wanted them 
just as he had formerly wanted his father's Tacitus in 
the old garret, eagerly. 

" Ah ! Laure, if you did but know how passionately 
I desire (but hush, keep the secret) two blue screens 
embroidered in black (silence ever !). In the midst of 
my troubles that 's a point to which my thoughts re- 
turn. Then I say to myself: ; I'll confide the wish to 
sister Laure.' When I get those screens I can never 
do anything wrong. Shall I not always have a re- 
minder of that indulgent sister before my eyes ? — so 
indulgent for her thoughts, so stern for mine. The 
designs can be anything you like, just what you please ; 
I shall be sure to think them pretty if they come from 
my alma soror" 

Here he is interrupted by bad news. He tells me his 
new misfortune with passionate eloquence, and then 
concludes in two lines : — 

" But my screens — I want them more than ever, for 
a little joy in the midst of torment." 



80 Sonore de Balzac. 

The Chouans appeared. The work, though imper- 
fect, and needing to be retouched (as it was later by 
the master's hand) revealed, nevertheless, such remark- 
able talent that it drew the attention of the public and 
also of the press, which at first was very friendly to my 
brother. Encouraged by this first success he returned 
with ardor to his work, and wrote his Catherine de Me- 
dicis. The same withdrawal into solitude, same com- 
plaints from his parents, same remonstrance on my part. 
Feeling content, probably, with his work when mj r letter 
arrived, he answers this time in a lively tone : — 

Paris, 1829. 

" I have received your scoldings, madame ; I see you 
want particulars about the poor delinquent. Honore, 
my dear sister, is a simpleton, who is crippled with debt 
without having had one single jovial time to show for 
it ; ready sometimes to dash his. head against the wall 
— though some persons do denj T that he has airy. At 
this moment he is in his room engaged in a duel ; he 
has a half-ream of paper to kill, and he is stabbing it 
with ink in a way to make his purse joyful. This fool 
has some good in him. They say he is cold and indif- 
ferent ; don't believe it, my darling sister. His heart is 
excellent ; and he is ready to do services to any one, — 
only, not having a credit with Mr. Shoemaker, he can't 
go of errands for everybody as he used to do ; for this 
he is blamed as Yorick was when he bought the mid- 
wife's license. 

" In the matter of tenderness he is in funds, and will 
return the double of what he receives ; but he is so con- 
stituted that a harsh or wounding word expels all the joy 



Honore de Balzac. 81 

in his heart, — so susceptible is he to delicacy of feeling. 
He needs hearts that can love largely, that understand 
affection, and know that it does not consist in visits, 
civilities, good wishes, and other conventions of that 
kind ; he carries eccentricity so far as to welcome a 
friend whom he has not seen for a long time as if they 
had been together the night before. This odd being 
may forget the harm that has been done him, but the 
kindness, never ! It should be graven on brass if his 
heart contained that metal. As for what indifferent 
people may think, or say of him, he cares as little as 
for the dust that sticks to his feet. He is trying to be 
something ; and when a man erects a building he 
does n't care for what idlers may scribble on the scaf- 
folding ! This young man, such as I describe him, 
loves you, dear sister, and these words will be under- 
stood by her to whom I address them." 

Mj brother spent the first years of his literary life 
amid even greater anxieties than those he had borne in 
the rue des Marais Saint-Martin, through which, in 
after years, he never passed without a sigh, remem- 
bering that his troubles began there. Without his 
faith in himself, without that honor which commanded 
him to live to pay his debts, he would certainly never 
have written the Comedie Humaine. He told me that 
during these years he had, on several occasions, been 
assailed by temptations to suicide, such as he has given 
to the hero of that work of youth and power which he 
named La Peau de Chagrin. What bitter griefs, 
what disappointments of every kind must have been 
the lot of him who said in his latter years : " We spend 



82 Honore de Balzac. 

the second half of life in mowing down in our hearts 
all that we grew there in the first half; and this we 
call acquiring experience ! " 

Or this, which is sadder still : — 

" Noble souls come slowly and with difficulty to be- 
lieve in evil feelings, in betrayal, in ingratitude ; but 
when their education in this matter is accomplished then 
they rise to a pity which is, perhaps, the highest reach 
of contempt for humanit}'." 

If he did not return after his disasters to a garret 
like that of the rue Lesdiguieres, it was only because 
he knew that in Paris eveiything is ground for specula- 
tion, even poverty : — 

" They would give me nothing for my books if I 
lived in a garret," he said to me. 

The luxury he affected, and which was so much 
blamed, and so immensely exaggerated, was a means of 
obtaining better prices for his work. 

My brother, admiring Walter Scott enthusiastically, 
as much for the ability with which he won and main- 
tained his success as for his genius, thought, in the 
first instance, of following his example and making a 
history of the manners and morals of our nation, 
selecting for that purpose its leading phases. Les 
Chouans, and Catherine de Medecis, which imme- 
diately followed it, testify to this intention, which he 
explains in the introduction to Catherine de Mideeis, — 
one of his finest books, known to few persons, although 
it proves to what heights Balzac might have attained 
as an historian. 

He abandoned this project, however, and confined 
himself to pictures of the manners and morals of his 



Honore de Balzac. 83 

own time, which he first entitled IzJtudes de Mceurs — 
Studies of Manners and Morals — dividing them into 
series, such as Scenes from Private Life — Country Life 
— Provincial Life — Parisian Life, and so forth. It was 
not until 1833, about the time of the publication of the 
Medecin de Campagne, that he first thought of col- 
lecting all his personages together and forming a com- 
plete societ3 r . The day when this idea burst upon his 
mind was a glorious day for him. He started from the 
rue Cassini, where he had taken up his abode after leav- 
ing the rue de Tournon, and rushed to the faubourg 
Poissonniere, where I was then living : — 

" Make your bow to me," he said to us, joyously, " I 
am on the highroad to become a genius ! " 

He then unfolded his plan, which frightened him a 
little, for no matter how vast his brain might be, it 
needed time to work out a scheme like that. 

"How glorious it will be if I succeed," he said, 
walking up and down the room. He could not keep 
still ; joy radiated from every feature. " I '11 willingly 
let them call me a maker of tales all the while that I 
am cutting stones for my edifice. I gloat in advance 
over the astonishment of those near-sighted creatures 
as they see it rise ! " And thereupon this hewer of 
stones sat down to talk over the building at his ease. 

He judged the imaginary beings he created with 
impartiality, in spite of the tenderness he felt for 
each. 

" Such an one is a scoundrel," he would say ; " he 
will never come to any good. That man, hard worker 
and a good fellow, he will be rich ; his nature will 
always keep him happy." " Those others have com- 



84 Honore de Balzac. 

mitted peccadilloes, but they have such good intellects 
and so much knowledge of men and things that they 
will get to the top of the social ladder." 

"Peccadilloes, brother? — you are very indulgent." 

" You can't change them, my dear ; the}* sound the 
abysses for themselves, but the}' know how to guide 
others. The wise and virtuous are not always the 
best pilots. It is not my fault ; I don't invent human 
nature ; I observe it in the past and in the present, 
and I try to paint it such as it is. Mere inventions 
would n't convince anybody." 

He would tell us the news of his imaginary world as 
others tell that of the real world. 

"Do you know who Felix de Vandenesse is going 
to marry? A demoiselle de Grandville. It is an 
excellent match, for the Grandvilles are rich, in spite 
of what Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille has cost them." 

If we sometimes asked for mercy to a young man 
who was hurrying to his ruin, or to some poor unhappy 
woman whose sad fate interested us, he would answer : 

"Don't bewilder me with your sensibilities; truth 
before everything. Those persons are feeble, inca- 
pable ; what happens to them must happen ; so much 
the worse for them." 

But in spite of this imperious talk their disasters 
did grieve him. One of Doctor Minoret's friends, 
Captain Jordy, excited our curiosity. My brother 
had told nothing of his life, and yet man}* things led 
us to believe he had met with great trials. We asked 
him about them. '- 1 did not know Monsieur de Jordy 
before he came to Nemours," he replied. On one 
occasion I invented a little romance on the old man's 



Honore de Balzac. 85 

life, which I told to Honore (such jokes did not dis- 
please him). " What you say may be so," he replied, 
" and as you are interested in Monsieur de Jordy I 
will get at the truth about him." 

He was a long time hunting up a husband for 
Mademoiselle Camille de Grandlieu, and rejected all 
those we proposed for her. 

" His people are not in the same society ; nothing 
but chance could bring that marriage about, and chance 
should be used very cautiouslv in a book ; reality alone 
justifies improbability ; we novelists are allowed only 
possibilities." He finally chose the young Comte de 
Restaud for Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, and rewrote 
for that marriage the admirable history of Gobseck, 
in which the highest morality is to be found in the 
facts, not in the words. 

Like mothers who particularly attach themselves to 
unfortunate children, Honore had a weakness for those 
of his works which had the least success. For them 
he was jealous of the fame of the others. The univer- 
sal praise bestowed on Eugenie Grandet ended by 
chilling his regard for that work. When we scolded 
him for this, "Do let me alone!" he would sa}^ ; 
' ' those who call me ' the father of Eugenie Gerandet ' 
want to belittle me. It is a masterpiece, I know, but 
it is a little masterpiece ; the} T are very careful not to 
mention the great ones." 

When the time came for the collection of his works 
in a compact edition he entitled it La Cornedie JTu- 
maine [The Comedy of Human Life] ; a great de- 
cision, which cost him many doubts and hesitations. 
He, usually so resolute, feared he should be thought 



86 Honore de Balzac. 

too bold. This fear is plainly seen in the noble preface 
which accompanied the edition. I have never been 
able to read the close of it without emotion ; it was, 
unhappily, prophetic ; he was destined not to finish the 
work he loved so well. 1 It was at this time that he 
associated his friends with his work by dedicating to 
each of them a book, or a tale, of the Comedie Hu- 
maine. The list of these dedications proves that he 
was loved b} T many of our illustrious contemporaries. 

From 1827 to 1848 my brother published ninety- 
seven works ; and I may add that he wrote this enor- 
mous number with his own hand, without secretary or 
corrector of proofs. A few facts as to the origin of 
some of these works may be of interest. 

The subject of the Auberge Rouge (a true histor} 7 , 
in spite of all that has been said about it) was given 
to him by an old army surgeon, a friend of the man 
who was condemned unjustly. My brother merely 
added the conclusion. The novel of " Quentin Dur- 
ward," which has been so much admired, more espe- 
cially as an historical tale, angered Honore extremely. 
Contraiy to the opinion of the world, he thought Wal- 
ter Scott had strangely misrepresented Louis XI., " a 
king not as yet understood," he used to sa} T . This 
anger led him to write Maitre Cornelius, in which he 
places Louis XL on the scene. Les Proscrits, writ- 
ten after a profound study of Dante, as homage to 
that powerful genius, was part of the original scheme I 
have mentioned. Tin Episode sous la Terreur was 
related to him by the gloomy hero of that tale. Ho- 

1 In the American translated series this preface accompanies 
the volume containing Pere Goriot. 



Honore de Balzac. 87 

nore had alwaj's desired to see Sanson the executioner. 
To know what that man, whose soul was filled with 
blood} T memories, thought, — to learn how he himself re- 
garded his terrible business and his wretched life, — was 

indeed an investigation to tempt him. Monsieur A , 

the director of-prisons, with whom nry brother was inti- 
mate, arranged an interview. Honore went to Mon- 
sieur A 's house, and there found a pale man of a sad 

and noble countenance ; his dress, manners, language, 
and education might have led others to think him some 
writer brought there by a like curiosity. It was Sanson ! 

My brother, warned Irv Monsieur A , repressed all 

surprise and repulsion, and led the conversation to the 
subjects which interested him. He won Sanson's con- 
fidence so thoroughly that the latter, carried away by 
his feelings, spoke of the sufferings of his life. The 
death of Louis XVI. had caused him all the terrors and 
remorse of a criminal (Sanson was a royalist). The 
day after the execution he ordered the only expiatory 
mass that was celebrated in Paris in those days to be 
said for the king ! 

It was also a conversation my brother had with 
Martin, the celebrated tamer of wild beasts, at the 
close of one of his exhibitions, which made him write 
the short stor} r entitled Tine Passion dans le desert. 
Seraphita, that strange work which might be taken for 
the translation of a German book, was inspired by a 
friend. Our mother helped him to the means of exe- 
cuting it. She was always much concerned about 
religious ideas, read the books of the mystics, and 
even collected them. Honore had seized upon the 
works of Saint-Martin, Swedenborg, Mademoiselle 



88 Honore de Balzac. 

Bourignon, Madame Gu} T on, Jacob Boehm, and others, 
over one hundred volumes in all, and devoured them. 
He read almost as others glanced ; yet he assimilated 
the ideas contained in a book. He plunged into the 
study of somnambulism and magnetism ; my mother, 
eager after the marvellous, supplied him with still other 
means of studj T , for she knew all the magnetizers and 
celebrated somnambulists of the da}\ Honore was 
present at their seances, became enthusiastic over their 
inexplicable faculties and the phenomena they pro- 
duced, discovered for those faculties a wider field than 
they really have, perhaps, and composed Seraphita 
under the impression of such ideas. But recalled by 
the necessities of life, which did not allow of his writ- 
ing other books than those that pleased the public, he 
returned, happily, to the Real, and was detached from 
rnetaplrysical meditations which might, perhaps, have 
misled his great intellect, as they have that of others. 

Independently of his books, he had a large corres- 
pondence on business, together with other letters which 
took much time. During these years I find many re- 
lating to journe3 T s in Savoie, to Sardinia, and Corsica, 
to German} T , Italy, and to Saint Petersburg and South- 
ern Russia, where he made a long stay on two occa- 
sions ; not to speak of trips in France to the various 
localities where he placed or intended to place the per- 
sonages of his tales, for the purpose of describing faith- 
fully the towns and country regions where they lived. 
Often, when he came to take leave of us, he would Say, 
" I am off for Alencon to see Mademoiselle Cormon," 
or "to Grenoble, where Monsieur Benassis lived." 

The impossible did not exist for him ; and he proved 



Honore de Balzac. 89 

it in the first instance by finding courage to live through 
these early j'ears of his literary life, when more than 
once he deprived himself of the necessaries of life to 
procure the superfluities, so needful to him in order to 
occupy a place in the social life he wished to paint. The 
recollection of those years brings back such anguish to 
my mind that I cannot think of them even now without 
sadness. From 1827 to 1836 my brother could not 
support himself and meet his obligations without draw- 
ing notes, the maturing of which kept him in a state of 
perpetual anxiety ; for he had nothing with which to 
meet them but the profits of his works, and the time in 
which he could finish each book was uncertain. After 
getting those notes accepted and discounted by usurers 
(the first difficult}') he was often obliged to renew 
them, 'a second and still greater difficulty which he 
alone could manage ; for others would have failed in 
negotiations where he could fascinate — even usurers. 
"What a waste of intellect!" he would say to me, 
sadly, when he returned, worn out, from these efforts 
which sadly interfered with his work. 

He was unable to prevent the accumulating interest 
on his principal obligations from rolling up until it 
made his "floating debt" (as he called it in his gay 
moments) like a snowball, growing larger as it rolled ; 
this debt so increased with the months and }'ears that 
there were times when my brother despaired of ever 
paying it. To pacify the more threatening of his cred- 
itors he performed actual prodigies of labor from time 
to time, which overwhelmed both publishers and printers. 
This almost superhuman toil was, undoubtedly, one of the 
causes which shortened his life. A great mental shock 



90 HonorS de Balzac. 

brought on the heart disease of which he ultimately 
died, but it might not have killed him so early had it 
not been developed by the over-heating of his blood. 
This condition of anxiety lasted until the time came for 
the reprinting of his works, which enabled him to at 
least partially free himself from debt. With what joy 
he lessened the figures of that terrible amount, which he 
kept ever under his e3 r es so as to stimulate his courage. 

4 'After such toil as this, when shall I have a penny 
for myself?" he often said to me. "I will certainly 
frame it ; it will be, in itself, the history of my life." 

A few letters of the years 1832, 1833, 1834, 1835, 
during which he travelled much, will show the condition 
of his soul far better than I can tell it. The} T are writ- 
ten from Angouleme, Aix-les-Bains, Sache, Marseilles, 
and Milan. The books of which he speaks enable me 
to assign the dates, which are nearly always wanting 
to his letters. Angouleme was a town where the Car- 
raucls, friends of ours, whom my brother often visited, 
were then living. (Commandant Carraud was in charge 
of the government pow r der-works.) A warm friendship 
had sprung up between my brother and this honorable 
family in 1826, when I was living at Versailles. Mon- 
sieur Carraud was then director of the military school of 
Saint-Cyr. I was overjoyed to meet his wife, with 
whom I had been brought up. Her faithful and intelli- 
gent friendship was one of the happinesses of my 
brother's life. Those of his works which are signed at 
Angouleme and Frapesle (a countiy-seat belonging to 
Madame Carraud in Berry) bear testimony to their 
deep sympathy. 

Sache is a fine estate about eighteen miles from 



Honore de Balzac. 91 

Tours, belonging to Monsieur de Margonne, a friend of 
our family. Honore found there, at all times, the 
noblest hospitality joined to unvarying affection. With 
these friends he could have the tranquillity he could not 
have in Paris. At Angouleme and at Sache he wrote 
several of his books, more especially Louis Lambert, 
Le Lys dans la Vallee, La Recherche de V Absolu, aud 
others I do not now recollect. 

" Angouleme, 1832. 

44 Thank }T>u, sister; the devotion of the hearts we 
love does us so much good ! You have revived the en- 
ergy which has enabled me, so far, to surmount the diffi- 
culties of my life. Yes, 3 T ou are right ; I shall not stop 
short ; I shall advance, I shall attain my end ; you 
will one day see me counted among the great minds of 
France. But what efforts to attain it ! they wear out 
the body, weariness comes, discouragement follows ! 

44 Louis Lambert has cost me such toil ! how many 
books I have had to re-read in order to write this one 
book ! Some day or other it may turn science into new 
paths. If I had made it a purely learned work it would 
have taken the attention of thinkers, who now will not 
even cast their eyes upon it. But, should chance ever 
place Louis Lambert in their hands they will speak of 
it, perhaps. I believe it to be a fine book. Our friends 
here admire it, and }-ou know that they never deceive 
me. Why do you object to its ending? You know the 
reason why I chose it. You are always timid. This 
end is probable : many sad examples justify it ; did 
not the doctor himself say that madness is at the door 
of great minds which overstrain themselves ? 

44 Thanks again for your letter, and forgive a poor 



92 HonorS de Balzac, 

artist for the discouragement which brought it forth. 
The game begun, I must play boldly ; I must press on. 
My books are the only answer I will ever make to those 
who attack me. Do not let their criticisms affect you 
too much ; the} T are a good angury ; mediocrit} T is never 
attacked. Yes, you are right, my progress is a real 
one, and my infernal courage will be rewarded. Per- 
suade my mother to think this, my dear sister ; tell her 
from me to give me the charity of her patience. Such 
devotion will be counted to her. Some daj T , I hope, a 
little fame will repay all. Poor mother! that same 
imagination which she bestowed upon me drives her 
mind from north to south, and from south to north per- 
petually ; such tossings to and fro are fatiguing ; I know 
it well nryself. Tell her I love her as I did when a child. 
Tears are in my e3'es as I write these lines, — tears of 
tenderness and of despair. I think of the future ; I 
must have nry devoted mother with me in the day of 
m}' triumph; but when shall I win it? Take care of 
our mother, Laure, for the present and for the future. 

"As for 3 t ou and 3'our husband, never doubt nry heart. 
If I cannot write to j T ou be indulgent, do not blame my 
silence ; say to yourselves : ' He thinks of us ; ' un- 
derstand me, my kind friends, 3'ou, my oldest and 
surest affections. Each time that I issue from nry long 
meditations, my exhausting toil, I rest in your hearts 
as in some delightful spot where nothing wounds me. 
Some da3 T when m3 T work develops 3'ou will see how many 
hours were needed to think and write so many things ; 
you will then absolve me for what may now displease 
3'ou, and j t ou will forgive the egoism, not of the man 
(for the man has none), but of the thinker and toiler. 



Honore de Balzac. 93 

" I kiss}*ou, dear consoler who bring me hope, with a 
kiss of tender gratitude. Your letter revived rne ; after 
I had read it I gave a joyful hurrah and shouted, ' For- 
ward, soldier ! fling thyself boldly into the fray.' " 

The reader will understand the emotions with which 
I received such letters as these. 

In Louis Lambert nvy brother had felt obliged, in 
order to bring forward ideas which were not yet ac- 
cepted, to put them under the safeguard of supposed 
madness. " And even so," he said to me, " I have not 
dared to give them all the extension that I see in them." 
Louis Lambert asks himself whether the constituent 
principle of electricit}- does not enter as a basis into the 
particular fluid from which Ideas spring. He saw in 
Thought a complete system, like one of Nature's king- 
doms, a celestial flora, as it were, the development of 
which by some man of genius would be taken for the 
work of a lunatic. " Yes, all things within us and 
without us," said Louis Lambert, " bear evidence to the 
life of Ideas, — those ravishing creations which, obeying 
some mysterious revelation of their nature, I compare 
to flowers." 

My brother returns in several of his works to this 
subject of meditation. In the Peau de Chagrin, among 
others, he analyzes the birth, life, or death of certain 
thoughts, — one of the most fascinating pages of that 
book. 

Louis Lambert found in the moral nature phenomena 
of motion and gravity, similar to those of the physical 
nature, and demonstrated his opinion by certain 
examples. 

" The emotion of expectant attention" he said, " is 



94 Honore de Balzac. 

painful through the effect of a law in virtue of which 
the weight of a body is multiplied by its swiftness. 
Does not the weight of sentiment, the moral gravity, 
which waiting produces, increase by the constant addi- 
tion of past pains to present pain? To what if not to 
some electric substance can we attribute that magic b\ r 
force of which the Will sits majestically enthroned in 
the eye, to blast all obstacles at the command of 
genius, or breaks forth in the voice, or filters visibly, in 
defiance of hypocrisy, through the human cuticle? The 
current of this king of fluids which, under the high 
pressure of Thought or Sentiment, flows forth in waves, 
lessens to a thread, or gathers to a volume and gushes 
out in lightning jets, is the occult minister to whom 
we owe the efforts (be thej T fatal or beneficent) of the 
arts and the passions, — the intonations of the voice, 
rough, sweet, terrifying, lascivious, horrible, seductive, 
which vibrate in the heart, in the bowels, in the brain 
at the will of our wishes, — the spell of touch, from 
which proceed the mental transfusions of the artist 
whose creative hands, made perfect through passionate 
study, can evoke nature, — the endless gradations of the 
eye, passing from sluggish aton} 7 to the discharge of 
lightning-flashes full of menace. God loses none of his 
rights in this system. Thought, material thought tells 
me of new and undiscovered grandeurs in the Divine." 
I end my quotations ; having merely wished to prove 
what I have advanced. The book alone can enable the 
reader to appreciate the heights of a spirit so ardent in 
seeking the solution of questions which occupy the 
minds of all thinkers. Let us return now to the reali- 
ties of life and see if the man who in 1840 put the fol- 



Honore de Balzac. 95 

lowing words into the mouth of Z. Marcas (in a number 
of the "Revue Parisienne") was capable of judging 
of men and things : — 

" ' I do not believe that the present form of govern- 
ment will last ten years,' said Z. Marcas. ' The young 
blood which made August, 1830, and which is now for- 
gotten, will burst forth like steam from the explosion 
of a boiler. That youth has no safety-valve in France 
to-day ; it is gathering up an avalanche of rejected 
capacities and honorable but restless ambitions. What 
sound will it be that shakes these masses and puts 
them in motion? I know not; but they will rush like 
an avalanche on the present state of things and will 
overthrow it. The laws of ebb and flow rule the gen- 
erations, The Roman empire had ignored them when 
the barbaric hordes came down. The barbarians of 
to-day are intellects. The laws of surplus are slowly 
and dumbly acting all about us. The government is the 
guilty one ; it is not recognizing the two powers to 
which it owes all. It allows its hands to be tied by the 
absurdities of the Contrat, and it is now in a fair way 
to become a victim. Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, 
were and are eager to welcome intelligent youth. In 
France youth is now condemned to inactivit}^ by the 
new legislation, hy the fatal conditions of the elective 
principle, by the vicious theories of ministerial consti- 
tution. If you examine the composition of the elective 
Chamber yon will find no deputies of thirty 3*ears of 
age. The youth of Richelieu and of Mazarin, of Tur- 
enne and Colbert, of Pitt and Saint Just, of Napoleon 
and Prince Metternich have no place there. Burke, 
Sheridan, and Fox cannot sit on its benches. . . . We 



96 Honore de Balzac, 

may conceive the causes of coming events, but we can- 
not predict what those events may be. At the present 
time everything is driving the youth of France to re- 
publicanism, because it sees in a republic its prob- 
able emancipation ; it remembers the young generals 
and the young statesmen of the past. The impru- 
dence of the present government is equalled only by its 
avarice. . . . France inferior before Eussia and Eng- 
land ! France in the third rank ! They have given us 
peace by discounting the future/ he cried, ' but danger 
is ahead. The 3 T outh of France will rise as it did in 
1790, and you will perish because you did not ask for 
its vigor and its energy, its devotion and its ardor ; be- 
cause you disliked young men of ability, and would not 
win the noble generation of the present day by love.' " 

These words, written at a period when the reign of 
Louis-Philippe was in its highest prosperity, prove that 
Balzac saw far and judged from heights. 

After Louis Lambert was finished my brother left 
Angouleme for Savoie. I find two letters from Aix-les- 
Bains which may be given ; one to my mother, one 
to me : — ■ 

"Aix, Sept. 1st, 1832. 

"I have felt the deepest emotion in reading your 
letter, mother, and I adore you. How and when shall 
I render, and can I ever render, back to } T ou, in tender- 
ness and comfort, all that you are doing for me? I 
can, at this time, offer you only my gratitude. The 
journejr which you have enabled me to make is indeed 
very necessary to me ; I was worn out with the labor 
of writing Louis Lambert; I had sat up mam r nights, 
and so abused the use of coffee that I suffered pains in 



Honore de Balzac. 97 

nry stomach which amounted to cramp. Louis Lam- 
bert is, perhaps, a masterpiece, but it has cost me dear, 
— six weeks of unremitting labor at Sache, and ten 
days at Angouleme. Now then, perhaps, certain 
friends will think me a man of some value. I thank 
you from the bottom of my heart for relieving me of 
the worries of material life ; my tenderness for you is 
not of those that words express. Such unceasing toil 
as mine must surely be crowned by fortune ; I hope 
for it all the more because I see other talents rewarded. 
As for fame, I begin not to despair of it. 

"Take care of your health, mother; you must live 
that I may pay you all. Oh, how I would kiss you if 
you were only here ! What gratitude do I not feel for 
the kind hearts that pull some thorns from my life and 
smooth my path b}*" their affection ; though, forced to 
struggle incessantly against my lot, I have not always 
the time to express my feelings. But I will not now 
let a day go by without your knowing what tenderness 
this last devotion of yours excites in me. Mothers give 
birth to their children more than once, do they not, 
mother? Poor darlings! are you ever loved enough? 
Ah ! could I but reward you some day with happiness, 
b}' gratifying your pride, and by nry genius, for all the 
anguish that I have caused you. 

"I am in a great vein of inspiration, and I hope to do 
much work here where I am tranquil. . . . 

" A person just starting for Paris will bring 3-011 some 
manuscripts to take to Mame [his publisher]. Tell him 
he shall have Les Chouans re-written in February if 
he wishes to reprint it. 

"I am writing, by way of amusement, some contes 



98 Honore de Balzac. 

drolatiques. Three are finished, and I am satisfied 
with them. I am also at work to supply the ' Revue de 
Paris ' up to December, and I have articles in my head 
for January and February, which are really half done. 

" Don't be uneasy about my leg. I have taken baths, 
and the scab is forming. I found a pretty room en- 
gaged for me which costs two francs a day. I get m}' 
meals from a neighboring restaurant. In the morning 
an egg and a glass of milk, a breakfast which comes to 
fifteen sous ; dinner at the same rates. So you see. 
mother, that though you have a son who is rather a 
dreamer, he is at least economical. 

" I press you in my arms and kiss those dear ej-es 
that watch over me." 

" Aix, September 15th. 

"A word to you, my dearly beloved sister. In the 
course of my travels I have seen delightful places, I 
shall perhaps see lovelier still, and I want you to know 
that none of them can make me forget you. 

" From m}' room I see the whole valley of Aix. On 
the horizon are hills, the high mountains of the Deut- 
du-Chat, and the exquisite lake of Bourget. But I 
must work in the midst of these enchantments. Mother 
has probably told 3-011 that I have to furnish fortj 7 pages 
a month to the ' Revue de Paris.' 

"lam now between thirty and forty, dear sister ; in 
other words, in the full maturity of my powers ; I must 
now write on my noblest subjects which ought to crown 
my work. When I return I shall see if I have enough 
tranquillity of mind to attempt those great works. 

" Mother will have told you that I came near being 
killed under the wheels of a diligence. I escaped with 



Honore de Balzac. 99 

an injur} 7 to the leg ; but the baths and rest are curing 
it. Yesterday I was able to drive to the lake. Here 
I am at the gates of Italy and I fear lest I yield to the 
temptation of entering them. The journey" would not 
be costl3 T . I should go with the Fitz-James party, 
which would be most agreeable to me, for they are 
charming. I should travel in their carriage. All ex- 
penses calculated, it would cost a thousand francs to 
go from Geneva to Rome, and my quarter of that would 
be two hundred and fifty francs ; I should need five 
hundred in Rome, and then I would spend the winter 
in Naples. But as I cannot touch m} r receipts in Paris, 
which must go to meet the notes, I should, if I decided 
to go to Italy, write the Medecin de Campagne for 
Mame at once, and that book would pay for all. I 
shall never have another such opportunity. The duke 
knows Italy and would save me all loss of time ; per- 
sons ignorant of the countr} 7 waste much in looking at 
useless things. I should work wherever I went. In 
Naples I should have the advantage of the embassy 
and the couriers of Monsieur de Rothschild, whose ac- 
quaintance I have made here, and who will give me 
introductions to his brother ; my proofs can therefore 
come regularty and my work will go on as usual. Talk 
to my mother about this ; and write to me in detail 
about all of you." 

On further calculation the journey to Italy was con- 
sidered too expensive ; my brother did not allow him- 
self to take it, but returned to Angouleme, where he 
finished La Femme Abandonnee, wrote La Grenadiere 
and Le Message, and began Le Medecin de Campagne, 



100 Honore de Balzac. 

which he concluded in the rue Cassini, on his return 
to Paris. 

Will the details I am now about to give interest the 
public? Affection makes me a poor judge of this ques- 
tion. I nryself think them fitted to explain this many- 
sided character, in which the qualities of youth remained 
so long and resisted so much. This belief and the feel- 
ing that they cannot belittle Balzac makes me write 
down the following recollections fearlessly, one by one, 
as they come into my mind, remembering that he said 
himself it was "illusions that helped him to live." 

To oblige himself to take the exercise necessary for 
his health in the midst of such a sedentary life, my 
brother corrected his proofs either at the printing-offices 
or at my house. According to the weather (which had 
great influence upon him), his immediate embarrass- 
ments, the difficulties of his work, or the extreme fa- 
tigue of sitting up all night, he often arrived scarcely 
able to drag himself along, gloomv and dejected, his 
skin looking sallow and jaundiced. Seeing his de- 
pressed state, I would trj T to find the means to draw 
him out of it. He, who could read thoughts, would 
answer mine before I spoke them. 

" Don't console me," he would say in a faint voice, 
dropping into a chair ; " it is useless. I am a dead 
man." 

The dead man would then begin in a doleful voice to 
tell of his new troubles ; but he soon revived, and the 
words came forth in the most ringing tones of his voice. 
Then, opening his proofs, he would drop back into his 
dismal accents, and saj^, by way of conclusion : — 

"Yes, I am a wrecked man, sister." 



Honore de Balzac. 101 

" Nonsense ! no man is wrecked with such proofs as 
those to correct." 

Then he would raise his head ; his face unpuckered, 
little by little ; the sallow tones of his skin disappeared. 

" By God, you are right!" he would cry. "Those 
books will make me live. Besides, blind Fortune is here, 
is n't she ? why should n't she protect a Balzac as well 
as a ninny? — and there are always ways of wooing 
her. Suppose one of my millionnaire friends (and I have 
some) or a banker, not knowing what to do with his 
money, should come to me and say, 'I know your im- 
mense talents and your anxieties ; you want such and 
such a sum to free } 7 ourself ; accept it fearlessly; you 
will pay me ; your pen is worth millions.' That is all 
J want, my dear." 

Accustomed to such illusions, which revived his cour- 
age and his light-heartedness, I never showed any sur- 
prise at these suggestions. Having invented his fable, 
he would pile reasons upon reasons for believing it. 

" Such men spend so much on mere fancies. A fine 
action is a fancy like any other, and it would give them 
actual joy all the time. What a thing to be able to sa}% 
'I have saved a Balzac!' Humanity does, here and 
there, have good impulses, and there are persons who, 
without being Englishmen, are capable of such eccen- 
tricity. I shall meet with one," he cried ; " millionnaire 
or banker, I shall find one ! " 

This belief established, he would walk up and down 
the room joyously, flinging up his arms and waving 
them. 

"Ha! Balzac is a free man! You shall see, my 
dear friends and nry dear enemies, how far he can go." 



102 Honore de Balzac. 

First, he went straight to the Institute. From there 
to the Chamber of Peers was but a step, and in he went. 
Wiry shouldn't he be a peer? Such a one and such a 
one were raised to the peerage. From peer he became 
minister, — nothing extraordinar}" in that, there were 
plenty of precedents ; besides, are not the men who 
have gone the round of all ideas the ones best suited 
to govern men? Why should people be astonished 
at his taking a, portfolio? 

The minister then sat down to govern France ; he 
pointed out and reformed manj~ abuses. Noble ideas 
and language issued from his dream. Then, as all was 
highly prosperous in his ministry and in the kingdom, 
he reverted to the banker or his millionnaire friend who 
had led him to such honors, wishing to make sure that 
he, too, was as fortunate as himself: — 

"His part will be a noble one in the future; the 
world will say, i That man understood Balzac, lent 
him mone} r on his talent, and led him to the honors he 
deserved.' That will be his gloiy, whoever else goes 
without. It is a higher distinction than burning a tem- 
ple to leave }T>ur name to posterity." 

When he had travelled far on his golden clouds he 
fell back into reality ; but by that time his mind was 
diverted, and he was half consoled. He corrected his 
proofs, read them over to us, and departed with a joke 
at himself. 

' ' Adieu ; I am going home to see if mj T banker is 
waiting for me," he said, laughing his good, hearty 
laugh. "If he is not there I shall find work at any 
rate ; and that 's in}~ true banker." 

His ardent spirit was constantly seeking means to 



Honore de Balzac. 103 

attain freedom from debt ; and these efforts wearied 
him more than his literary labors. 

One day, for instance, he thought he had discovered 
a substance suitable for the composition of a new kind 
of paper. This substance was everywhere, — cost less 
than rags. Here was joy, with many hopes and pro- 
jects, quickly followed by disappointment, for the ex- 
periments did not succeed. We supposed he would be 
in despair, but we found him radiant. 

" How about your paper? " 

4 'Paper! I am not thinking of that. You people 
have never reflected that the Romans, who knew very 
little about mines, have left treasures in their scoriae. 
Learned men in the Institute whom I have consulted 
think as I do, and I am going to Sardinia." 

" Going to Sardinia? pray how are you going to pay 
your way ? " 

" Pay my way? I shall traverse the whole island on 
foot, with a bag on my back, dressed like a beggar. I 
shall scare the brigands, and the crows, too. I have 
made my calculations ; six hundred francs will do it all." 

The six hundred francs acquired, he departed, and 
wrote to us from Marseilles on the 20th of March, 
1838: — 

" Don 't have an} 7 anxieties about me, mother ; and 
tell Laure not to have any. I have enough money, and 
with due deference to laurean wisdom I shall not need 
any for my return. I have just spent four days and 
five nights in the imperial of a diligence. My hands are 
so swollen I can hardlj* write. To-morrow, Wednesday, 
at Toulon. Thursda} T I start for Ajaccio, and eight 



104 Honor e de Balzac. 

days after that will be enough for my expedition. I 
could get to Sardinia from here for fifteen francs if I 
went by a trading vessel, but such craft take fifteen 
da} r s for the trip, and it is near upon the equinox ; 
whereas for — it is true — triple the amount I land 
there in three days. Now that I am almost there, I 
begin to have some doubts ; but in an} T case, I could not 
risk less to have more. I have spent only ten francs 
on the way. I am in a hotel that makes me shudder, 
but with baths I manage to get along. If I fail, a few 
nights of hard work will restore the equilibrium ! In 
one month I can scrape up plenty of money with my 
pen. 

"Adieu, my dear, loved mother; believe that there 
is far more desire to end the sufferings of those who are 
dear to me than personal desire for fortune in what I 
am undertaking. When a man has no capital he can 
make his fortune only b}' ideas like the one I am now 
pursuing. Ever yoxxv respectful son." 

It was good to hear him tell, on his return, of the 
vicissitudes of this remarkable journey. He had had 
the luck to encounter real brigands. 

"And they are pretty good devils outside of their 
industry," he assured us; " the} r told me nearly all I 
wanted to know. Those fellows take the measure of 
everything, land and people both ; they saw so plainly 
I was no fish for their net that I believe, God forgive 
me, they would sooner have lent me money than have 
asked for it." 

He arrived at Bastia without a sou, but his name 
when he told it was the signal for an uprising among 



Honor e de Balzac. 105 

the young men of the place. They had all read his 
books, and were filled with enthusiasm on seeing him. 
Great jo} r on his part ! "I have a reputation already 
in Corsica," he said. " Ah ! the brave 3-ouths, the fine 
countiy ! " Received and feted by Monsieur B., inspec- 
tor of finances, whom he knew, he had won enough 
money at cards to pa} T for his return to France, at the 
very moment when he was going to write to us to send 
him some ; he loved such pieces of luck, which made 
him think he had a star. But that was not all ! this 
tramping through Sardinia and these buffetings at sea 
had given him subjects, and such subjects ! The last 
surpassed all the others — unless we unwisely agreed 
with him ; for then he asserted the excellence of the 
first. He related these new subjects with fire ; plan, 
details, he had them all mapped out. " Pretty to do, 
is n't it? " he added. 

44 Do }T>u tell your ideas to ever3 T bod} T ? " I asked, 
rather frightened, for I knew that in the good republic 
of letters, where everybody wants to be king, they are 
not over-scrupulous as to rights of property. 

"Why not?" he answered. "The subject is noth- 
ing, it is the execution that does the thing. Let them 
try to do Balzac ; I defy them ! Would thieves know 
how to work? And if they did, so much the better for 
the public ; I should n't regret it, for I have plent} T of 
other things in m} T mind. The world is vast, and the 
human brain is as vast as the world." 

The specimens brought back from the mines were sub- 
mitted to chemists. Time was needed to analyze them ; 
moreover, Honore was not yet ready to go to Piedmont 
and ask for a concession of the land ; he had, as a pre- 



106 Honore de Balzac. 

liminary, to satisfy his publishers and earn the money 
for the journey. 

He lived a whole year on this Sardinian fortune, and 
projects kept pace with it. He flew with outspread 
wings through a terrestrial Eden, which he arranged to 
his fancy ; he bought the little chateau of Montcontour 
which he longed for in Touraine ; for, in spite of the 
indifference his townspeople had shown to him, he loved 
the land, and wished to end his days there. l< Gentle 
and tranquil thoughts grow in the soul as the vines in 
its soil,' 7 he said of it. There he proceeded to fancy 
himself resting from toil, living like an 03'ster in its 
shell, opening his being to the setting sun. He gilded 
this country life with the splendors of his mind, and 
transformed himself into his own Doctor Minoret in the 
midst of his friends, — the abbe, the mayor, and the 
justice of peace, — rejoicing in the same green old age 
which he has given him in Ursule Mirouet. But for all 
that, he said, he intended to guard his mind from grow- 
ing rusty. He should come every winter to Paris, and 
have a salon like that of Baron Gerard (which was long 
the model of all salons, past, present, and to come, for 
the meeting of artists), and there he should receive, like 
Gerard, all the celebrities born to fame or to be born. 
He knew how to honor them properly, for did n't he 
know just the measure of the respect they deserved ? 
Bah ! he would even invite the critics. Yes, it was to 
be a place of general pacification, and this king in his 
own right was a hearty good fellow, who knew neither 
hatred nor jealous}^. Then he could return to his soli- 
tude, beloved and blessed by all. 

Such were his dreams ! 



Honore de Balzac. 107 

But these dreams weighed on the hearts of his 
friends as much as his hours of depression ; for they 
revealed the burden of his sorrows equalty with his 
sadness. It was only in dreams that he could shake 
it off ; no sooner was he awakened than he shouldered 
it again. 

A 3'ear after his trip to Sardinia, my brother, having 
finished the books pledged to his publishers, and to re- 
views and newspapers, started for Piedmont to obtain 
the concession of his mine. Unreserved as ever, he 
had told the purpose of his journe} T to the Genoese cap- 
tain who took him to Sardinia the previous } T ear. The 
following letter explains how the captain profited by 
that confidence, to Honore's detriment. 

" Milan. 

" Dear Sister, — It would be too long to write all 
that I will tell you when I see } t ou, which will be soon, 
I hope. I am, after ver}^ fatiguing travels, kept here 
for the interests of the Visconti family. Politics have 
so embroiled them that the remnants of their prop- 
erty in this country would have been sequestrated 
without certain efforts on my part which have happily 
succeeded. 

u As to the principal object of my journey, all hap- 
pened as I expected, but the delay in my coming was 
fatal. That Genoese captain has obtained a concession 
in proper form from the court of Sardinia. There is 
over a million of money in the scoriae and the lead 
mines. A house in Marseilles with whom he has an 
agreement has had the ore assayed. I ought not to 
have loosened my grip on the enterprise last year, and 
so let them get before me. ..." 



108 Honore de Balzac. 

Being myself absent from Paris in October of the same 
year, I received the following letter from nry brother : 

" Gone without a word ! the poor toiler went to find 
3*ou and make 3-011 share a little J03', and he found no 
sister ! I torment you so often with nry troubles 
that the least I can do is to write 3'ou 1113- little J03*. 
You won't laugh at me, 3-ou '11 believe me, dear — 
you will. 

" I went yesterda3 T to Gerard's ; he presented me to 
three German families. I thought I was dreaming ; 
three families ! no less. One was from Vienna, one 
from Frankfort, and the third — Prussia, perhaps ; but 
I don't rightly know where. They confided to me that 
they had been to Gerard's faithfully for one whole 
month in the hope of meeting me ; and the3 r let me 
know that beyond the frontier of France (dear, un- 
grateful countr3 T !) nry reputation has begun. 'Perse- 
vere in your labors,' the3 T added, ' and you will be at 
the head of literature in Europe.' Europe ! the3' said 
it, sister ! Flattering families ! Oh, how I could 
make certain persons roar with laughter if I told them 
that. But these were good, kind Germans, and I let 
myself believe they thought what the3 r said, and, to tell 
the truth, I 'd have listened to them all night. Praise 
is such a blessing to us artists, and that of the good 
Germans primed me with courage. I departed, gay as 
a lark, from Gerard's, and I am going to fire three guns 
on the public and on nxy detractors ; to wit, Eugenie 
Grandet, Les Aventures d'une Idee heureuse, which 
you know about, and my Pretre catholique, one of the 
finest of my subjects. 



Honore de Balzac. 109 

" The matter of the jfitudes de Mceurs is well under 
wa} T . Thirty-three thousand francs for author's rights 
in the reprints will stop up large holes. That slice of my 
debts paid, I shall go and seek my reward at Geneva. 
The horizon seems really brightening. I have begun 
hard work again. I go to bed at six, directly after din- 
ner. The animal digests and sleeps till midnight. 
Then Auguste makes me a .cup of coffee on which the 
mind works with a steady flow till midday. After that 
I rush to the printing-office to take my copy and get 
my proofs, which gives exercise to the animal, w T ho 
dreams as he goes. 

" I can put a good deal of black on white, little sister, 
in twelve hours ; and after a month of such life there's 
not a little earned. Poor pen ! it must be made of 
diamond not to be worn out long ago. To lift its mas- 
ter to reputation (according to the Germans) to enable 
him to pay his debts to all, and then to give him, some 
day, rest upon a mountain — that is its task. 

" What the devil were } T ou doing so late at M ? 

Tell me all about it — and tell me too that these Ger- 
mans of mine are worthy people. A fraternal hand- 
shake for Monsieur Canal. Tell him that the Aven- 
tures d'une Idee heureuse [Adventures of a good Idea] 
are on the ways. I send you proofs of the Medeein de 
Campagne." 

The Aventures d'une Idee heureuse and the Pretre 
Catholique were never written. The subject of the first of 
these books was inspired by the ill-luck of a great work 
with which his brother-in-law, Monsieur Surville, was 
concerned. Honore intended, in this book, to write the 



110 Honore de Balzac. 

history of a good idea useful to all, brought to nought 
by the individual interests with which it clashed, — thus 
causing the ruin of a man who had devoted himself to 
bring it about. The subject under my brother's pen 
would have been fruitful in observation and in social 
truths ; it would certainly not have been the least inter- 
esting of the books comprised in his work. 

Prior to the journey to Switzerland and Geneva to 
which my brother alludes in the foregoing letters, I find 
another letter which he addressed to me during one of 
my absences from Paris, which it maj T be interesting to 
give here : — 

" I have good news for you, little sister ; the reviews 
are paying me better prices. He} T ! he}' ! 

u 'Werdet announces that nry Medecin de Campagne 
was sold off in eight days. Ha ! ha ! 

"I have enough money to meet the notes of No- 
vember and December, which made } r ou so uneas} 7 . 
Ho! ho! 

" I have sold the reprinting of the books 03- that 

rascal R , Saint A., and other pseudonyms. The 

sale is made through a third part}', who denies the 
authorship ; for I will never admit it. But as they 
are reprinting them in that damned Belgium, which 
does so much harm, both to authors and publishers, I 
yield to the necessity of exchanging these books for 
good coin, and in that way I lessen the mischief. 

"And, finally, Gosselin publishes my Contes Dro- 
latiques. Ecco, sorella! 

'* All goes well, A few more efforts and I shall have 
triumphed in a great struggle by means of a feeble in- 



Honore de Balzac. Ill 

strument — a pen ! If nothing happens to prevent it, 
I shall soon owe nothing to an}- one except my mother ; 
and when I remember my disasters and the gloomy 
years I have passed through, I cannot help feeling some 
pride in thinking that by dint of courage and of toil I 
have won my liberty. 

" This thought has made me so happy that the other 
night I talked of a project to Surville in which you 
were concerned. I made him build a house close to 
mine ; our gardens adjoined ; we ate the fruits of our 
trees together — I went far ! The good brother smiled, 
and raised his eyes to heaven ; there was a world of 
affection for you and for me in that smile ; but I also 
saw in it that neither he nor I owned our houses as 
yet. Never mind, projects sustain the courage, and if 
God grants me health, we will have our houses, my 
good sister." 

This "project" afterwards led him to purchase a 
piece of ground at Ville-d'Avray, where he built Les 
Jardies. But the steep slope made the walls unsafe ; 
the property cost more than it ought to have done ; and 
other unfortunate circumstances obliged my brother to 
sell it. This purchase was also counted against him as 
a fault. 

In the foregoing letter Honore alludes to the Contes 
Drolatiques, which he said in a former letter he was 
writing " for relaxation." In these stories he intended 
to follow the transformations of the French language 
from the times of Rabelais to the present da} T , and 
thus impregnate his tales with the ideas of the various 
epochs. 



112 Honore de Balzac. 

"It will be with this work as with the Comedie 
Humaine" he said to us ; " the public will not under- 
stand its purpose until the work is finished. Until then 
these stories will only be recreation for artists. In 
them they '11 find the gayety they are often so much in 
need of." 

He also thought that if everything else failed these 
stories might save him from oblivion. The studies he 
then made of the old French writers led him to regret 
the desuetude of certain words which had never been 
replaced. He grieved over their fate as Vangelas might 
have clone. 

" What charming words ! don't they express exactly 
what thej T want to say ? What artless grace ! You 
find such words only in the infanc}' of a language. 
Now a days we have to use phrases to replace them. 
When I work at the dictionary of the Academy . . ." 

And that idea flung him into projects in which the 
French language became his millionnaire. He was apt 
at such times to get angry with those who found fault 
with him for creating certain words which he wanted in 
his books. 

"Who has the right to make gifts to a language if 
not a writer?" he would say; "our language has ac- 
cepted those of my predecessors, and she will accept 
mine ; my parvenus will become noble in time — which 
makes all nobilities. However, let the critics yelp over 
my ' neologisms ' as they call them ; everybody must 
live, you know." 



Honore de Balzac. 113 



CHAPTER V. 



EARLY MANHOOD. 



In reading the foregoing portion of Madame Surville's 
narrative, an impression is left upon the mind that more 
has been omitted than is told- Those were the years 
of his youth and early manhood, yet his sister tells us 
little of his actual life, his thoughts on external things, 
his relation to them ; above all, nothing of the inner 
man that was formed and being formed within him. 
If we turn to his correspondence, we find but two let- 
ters between the years 1822 and 1828, and those of no 
interest. It is evident that these omissions are inten- 
tional. If it was Balzac's will (as it appears to have 
been) to withhold his private life and motives and in- 
centives from public knowledge, we can only be glad 
that he foresaw the gossiping curiosit} 7 of a coming 
literary future, and kept that which was sacred to him 
from being trailed in the dust. But without attempting 
to pry into the life which he concealed (in fact there 
are no means of doing so), it is the right of posterity 
to judge a man Iry his utterances; and Balzac's works, - 
into which he put much of himself, together with a few 
stray glimpses given here and there in his letters of 
a later date, do throw some light upon his early 
manhood. 



114 Honore de Balzac. 

But before passing to these more difficult matters it 
is well to see if Balzac's life after he left his father's 
house at Villeparisis and became connected with men 
and things in Paris, can be reduced to a chronolog}-, 
however incomplete. Ail accounts of him are vague 
in this respect, often skipping years in the narration 
and returning to them latt'r. But by comparing the dif- 
ferent sources of information it is possible to get some 
connected idea of his outward life. 

Balzac himself said in after years : "When T was quite 
a .young man I had an illness from which persons do not 
recover ; nineteen out of twenty die. Dr. Nacquart said, 
4 If he gets well now he may live a hundred years.' I 
did get well, and I went to work ; I wrote novels for 
mere study ; one to break m}'self in to dialogue ; an- 
other to practise description ; a third to group m\* per- 
sonages, and so on." He frequently alludes to the fact 
that Dr. Nacquart saved his life. This illness, doubt- 
less the heart disease which he mentions to George Sand 
in 1831, and to which his sister alludes as the result of 
a great mental shock, must have occurred during the 
first of these years of which there is no record. 

In 1824-25, the period of his venture as a pub- 
lisher, we find that he wrote three of the ten novels he 
never acknowledged, the last of which was issued 03' 
Urbain Canel, a publisher of some repute ; also three 
pamphlets, Le Droit d'Ainesse, Vne Histoire Impar- 
tiale des Jesuites, and La Code des Gens homietes. 
Ghampfleury, who was employed hy the Lev\ T Freres 
to collect Balzac's signed writings under the title of 
(Eirvres diverses, mentions that throughout the vicissi- 
tudes of his life and his many changes of abode, Bal- 



Honore de Balzac. 115 

zac had preserved a number of boxes {cartons) full of 
youthful writings of little interest, which he had prob- 
ably never re-read, — the sort of papers which most 
men tear up at intervals or consign to the flames, but 
which Balzac had kept from some feeling or associa- 
tion. Among them there was neither correspondence, 
nor journal, nor scny paper serviceable to a biographer ; 
and, curiously enough, many were in verse, for which 
he had apparently not the slightest facult3 T . Champ- 
fleury says, however, that from the specimens he found 
it might be asserted that if Balzac had turned his mind 
to poetry he could have been one of the poets of the 
epoch, on a level with Victor Hugo and Lamartine. 
Balzac's own judgment in the matter is probably nearer 
the truth. It is told that Madame de Girardin, being 
dilatory in writing a sonnet for Les Illusions Perdues, 
the printer's devil, who had been sent for it in vain, 
seeing Balzac's extreme anno} T ance at the delay, said 
to him, not unnaturally, " Why don't you write it } T our- 
self, Monsieur de Balzac?" " Write it ir^self ! " cried 
Balzac, turning on him ; " don't you know, wretched 
boy, that it is utterly impossible for me to write a 
sonnet? " 

During the two years from August, 1826, to Septem- 
ber, 1828, when Balzac carried on the printing business, 
first alone and then in partnership with his foreman, Bar- 
bier, he took all work that came to him, and his name 
as printer is attached to the following books (among 
others) : the works of Lesage, the third edition of 
Madame Roland's " Memoirs," the works of Volney, M. 
deVigny's "Cinq-Mars," several novels by Zschokke, 
and an amusing little pamphlet of his own, Le Petit 



116 Honore de Balzac. 

Dictionnaire des Enseignes de Paris. He also printed 
and published the works of Moliere complete in one 
volume, with an introduction by himself; and he pub- 
lished in the same form, but did not print, the works of 
La Fontaine, also with an introduction ; these Intro- 
ductions are now among his collected writings. He 
did not print the edition of La Fontaine, which is an 
illustrated edition de luxe, because the establishment 
when he bought it was in bad condition, and he had, as 
we have seen, no money left out of his thirty thousand 
francs to better it, — scarcely enough, in fact, to carry 
it on. Thi.s was the chief cause of his failure. After 
he sold the business in September, 1828, it went 
into hands that could command more capital, became 
remunerative, and was still in a prosperous condition 
some years after Balzac's death. 

TThen he left the printing-office in the Marais he took 
a single room in the rue de Tournon, No. 2, where he 
must have struggled for a time with the wolf at his 
door. But the worst had come, and things were about 
to mend. Outward and material circumstances were 
still against him, and continued to be so, under various 
phases, all his life ; but at last he had conquered, in 
some degree at least, his own difficulties of form and 
construction ; he was becoming able, by dint of per- 
severance and hard work, to present his thought in 
a manner that satisfied him. He now finished Les 
Chouans, which was published under his own name, 
by Canel and Levavasseur, in March, 1829. During 
this time (for he had the habit all through life of mak- 
ing his books long before he wrote them) another book 
must have lain, inchoate, in his mind, taken from his 



Honore de Balzac. 117 

own heart and experience, — Cesar Birotteau. He 
knew, none better, the anguish of that upright soul in 
the very circumstances he has given under the guise of 
fiction. 

Les Chouans was the turning-point of his literary 
career. He became known. Editors went to him for 
articles ; publishers offered to take his books. The 
following is a list of the novels and tales written b\ T 
him during the years 1829 and 1830. They now hold 
their appropriate, place in the Comedie Humaine : El 
Verdugo; La Paix du Menage; Gloire et Malheur 
(Jfaison du Chat-qui-pelote) ; Le Bal de Sceaux ; 
part of Catherine de Medicis ; Physiologie du mar- 
iage ; Gobseck ; La Vendetta; J&tude de femme ; 
Une double famille ; Adieu ; L'LJlixir de longue vie; 
part of Les petites Miseres de la vie conjugate ; line 
Passion dans le desert ; JJn Episode sous la Terreur; 
Jesus- Christ en Flandres} 

The first fruit of Balzac's dawning reputation was 
an introduction to Emile de Girardin (then editor of 
"La Mode"), through M. Alphonse Levavasseur, part- 
ner of Urbain Canel. M. de Girardin states that Balzac 
gave him a storj- entitled El Verdugo, which he printed 
in " La Mode," that publication being the first to ac- 

1 In an appendix will be found lists of Balzac's works so ar- 
ranged as to be useful to the American reader. They do not pre- 
tend to be full bibliographical lists of all Balzac's works ; for that 
students must go to the source whence they are taken, — to the 
fountain head, namely : Histoire des (Euvres de H. de Balzac, 
par le Vte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, 3me ed. Paris, Calmaim 
Levy, 1888; a work which covers the whole ground, and is, while 
strictly bibliographical, a monument of love, comprehension, and 
fidelity. 



118 Honor e de Balzac. 

cept his work. This introduction probably did more 
than anything else to bring Balzac into connection with 
the literary and other talent of that day. The salon 
of Madame Sophie Gay, Madame de Girardin's mother, 
had long been a centre of various interests. It was 
a refuge under the Empire for stubborn aristocrats, 
and in later years for the eager young blood of the da}', 
literary and artistic, which was troubled with a sense 
of its lack of opportunity. In 1830 these interests had 
the common ground of dislike to the bourgeois d^vnast}' ; 
poets, painters, and musicians, publicists, politicians, 
and beautiful and brilliant women met in Madame 
Gay's salon to contribute their part to that intercourse 
of talents, and do their best to shine. There Balzac, 
who alreadj- knew something of society and of well- 
bred women in his mother's house, was brought into 
familiar intercourse with such persons as Victor Hugo, 
de Vigny, Lamartine, and Frederic Soulie, Horace Ver- 
net and Baron Gerard, Rossini, then in the fame of his 
last opera, Guillaume Tell, Auber, Meyerbeer, Malibran 
and Duprez, the Due de Broglie and Thiers, Madame 
Tallien and Madame Recamier in their last years, 
George Sand in her dawn ; also Henri de la Touche, 
editor of the "Figaro," whom Delphine de Girardin 
called her intimate enem}~, together with many younger 
literary men and journalists of his own age. Every "one 
did his or her share towards the brilliancy of these 
evenings, among them Balzac, who, on one occasion, 
read the Peau de Chagrin aloud to the company. From 
this time till his death Madame de Girardin was among 
his stanchest friends ; she did as much justice as could 
be done in those days to his great powers, and she 



HonorS de Balzac. 119 

stood b}' him loyally, both in private and in the columns 
of the " Presse " (her husband's paper), long after Bal- 
zac had quarrelled with cle Girardin on a business mat- 
ter, and had ceased to go to her house. 

In the same year, 1830, he combined with Emile de 
Girardin, Victor Varaignes, Hippolite Auger, and Bois- 
le Comte, to found a weekly paper called the " Feuilleton 
des Journaux politiques," which was intended to sup- 
plement the purely political newspapers, and to be 
" specially devoted to the presentation and criticism of 
literary works and art productions." The publication 
was short-lived, but Balzac contributed man}' articles 
to it ; also to the " Silhouette," edited by Victor Ratier, 
and to the "Caricature," a spic} 7 semi-political paper, 
edited by M. Philippon, and devoted more especially to 
satirical attacks on the Bourgeois regime. Balzac did 
much work for it, thus serving an apprenticeship at 
inner journalism, which he afterwards put to use in Les 
Illusion* Perdues, and in his witty pamphlet Le Mono- 
graphie de la Presse Parisienne. He did not like the 
press, but it was on other than merely personal grounds. 
"It is not a dynast}', nor a Chamber, nor a system 
that rules France at this date," he sa} T s ; " it is a terrible 
power — Public Opinion. And who are making Opin- 
ion? The newspapers. And who make the news- 
papers? Writers, for the most part third-rate: for 
great as the mediocrity of Court, Chamber, and diplo- 
mats may be, the mediocrity of the writers and proprie- 
tors who engineer the French newspaper press (all 
obscure men without initiative or purpose, used-up by 
their own engine) is greater still." Later, he admits 
its power. " I don't like journalism ; I ma}' say I hate 



120 Honore de Balzac. 

it. It is a blind force, sly, malicious, insubordinate, 
without morality or tradition, without, 3011 ma} T say, an 
aim. But, at an}' rate, we have got to bow to it. It is 
a power, — the power of this century. It leads to all 
points of the circumference. It is the only power in 
these days that has the force to overthrow, and, conse- 
quently, to set up. Just see what the ' Debats,' the 
1 Constitutionel,' the 'Presse,' and even the ' Siecle,' 
can do in their several waj-s. I defy the government to 
name a minister, or a collector, or an admiral, or a for- 
ester without more or less considering the effect it will 
have on the sensitive skin of the press." He soon be- 
gan to tire of the tone of the u Caricature/' and to gird 
against weekly articles in derision of the king and " le 
grand poulot " (the Due d'Orleans). At the end often 
months he declared he had had enough of it, and that 
true criticism did not exist in France. All his articles 
of whatever kind have been collected since his death, 
and published among the " CEuvres Di verses." He 
would probably not have sanctioned the publication of 
all of them under his name ; for he practised criticism 
as he practised novel- writing, to train his hand and 
feel his way. 

At the close of the }~ear 1830 he began to write for 
the " Revue de Paris," then edited by Charles Rabou, 
but soon to pass into the hands of Buloz, also editor of 
the " Revue des Deux Mondes." Thus, in the course 
of this one year, Balzac was fairly launched upon the 
surface current of his chosen career. 

In Ma} T , 1831, he left his poor room in the rue de 
Tournon, and took a sunny little apartment in the rue 
Cassini, near the Observatoire, where he remained 



Honor e de Balzac. 121 

eight 3 r ears. It was the fitting up of this cheerful 
abode with blue cambric (saved from the printing-office) 
which drew upon him his mother's reproaches ; and even 
Monsieur Taine cannot refrain from remarking on the 
love of luxury which lusted for two blue screens made 
by his sister, presumably to match the hangings. It 
does not seem a heinous offence worth indicating to 
posterit}', and his sister could little have expected that 
her innocent story would be so applied ; but the charge 
was a true one. Hard as he worked to pay his debts 
(always his first object), and poorly as he lived, often 
going without the necessaries of life, he could not 
restrain his longing for rare old things of art, and beau- 
tiful decorations. George Sand said of him that he 
was "envious of a bibelot and incapable of envying 
another man's fame;" and this passion, which he was 
unable to resist, and probably never attempted to, in- 
creased his debts and added to the millstone already 
about his neck. He was aware of his weakness, how- 
ever, and was wont, at times, to hide his treasures 
from his friends as well as from his creditors. A cata- 
logue of his rare works of art of all kinds, and a 
description of his gallery in the Rue Fortunee (his last 
home) is given in Cousin Pons, a book which reveals, 
no doubt, in the person of the old collector, some of 
his own methods in obtaining those treasures. 

In the rue Cassini he became intimate with two men 
living in the same house, — Jules Sandean and Henri 
de la Tou die ; the latter was then editing the " Figaro," 
which he chiefly wrote himself. Many 3 r ears earlier la 
Touche had brought forward Andre Chenier, and lie 
was now among the first to advise and assist George 



122 Honor 6 de Balzac. 

Sand, then his secretary. He was a man of much liter- 
ary importance, which came to naught owing to the 
strange capriciousness of his nature. George Sand 
said of him that he had shown the promised land to 
others, but was unable to enter Canaan himself. She 
was just then trying her wings before writing "Indiana," 
and it was at this time that Jules Sandeau presented 
Balzac to her. Her account of their acquaintance and 
her judgment upon him will be given farther on, — the 
actual words of such contemporaries as George Sand 
and Theophile Gautier being far more useful to the 
reader than any synopsis made b}' others. 

From this time on we ma}^ see the man of strict honor 
and integrit}' applying himself to the payment of his 
debts and the earning of a competency, the need of 
which he now began to feel keenly, as he entered more 
and more into the social life it was his destiny to paint. 
These were his first objects as seen by the general eye ; 
but there was a higher law within him, namely, the 
development of his own powers, and nothing was suf- 
fered to interfere with it, — neither pressure of outward 
cares, nor remonstrances of angry publishers, nor temp- 
tations of friendship and pleasure (strong in his loving 
and joyous nature), nor the sense of his incompetency 
in certain ways of putting into form his thought. He 
never trifled with his genius, the sacred gift which he 
recognized as a lad in his cage at Vendome. He obeyed 
the inspiration that came to him to train it to its highest 
service ; he cloistered his spirit for weeks and months, 
wrestling in the silence and solitude of night to bring 
his great powers within control. There lay his real life ; 
a life of which he gives but few glimpses and no par- 



Honor e de Balzac. 123 

ticulars ; a solitary life, possibly typified to his mind 
by the dress he wore. Scarcely an}" record is left of it 
except in the books which issued from its solitude ; but 
they reveal much. A man less sound in body and mind 
would have had no outward life ; his nervous system, 
as we now say of an overtaxed mind and body, would 
have broken down ; or he would at least have been 
inert and irritable. But Balzac's healthy and hearty 
nature came to the fore so soon as the strain was 
over ; no sooner had he touched earth than the giant 
sprang up refreshed, and took his place among the men 
and events of the day as if no other life were in his 
thoughts. 

Lamartine gives a portrait of him at this time which 
is doubtless a true one. He says that he returned to 
Paris after an absence of years, knowing only that a 
young writer named Balzac was said to show a healthy 
originality. He chanced to read a few pages of his 
writings, which moved him to exclaim, "A man is 
born to us ! " Soon after this he met him at dinner at 
Madame de Girardin's." 

" Balzac was standing before the fireplace of that 
dear room where I have seen so man}' remarkable men 
and women come and go. He was not tall, though the 
light on his face and the mobility of his figure pre- 
vented me from noticing his stature. His bod}" swayed 
with his thought ; there seemed at times to be a space 
between him and the floor ; occasionally he stooped as 
though to gather an idea at his feet, and then he rose 
on the points of them to follow the flight of his thought 
above him. At the moment of my entrance he was 
carried away by the subject of a conversation then go- 



124 Honore de Balzac. 

ing on with Monsieur and Madame de Girardin, and 
only interrupted himself for a moment to give me a 
keen, rapid, gracious look of extreme kindliness. 

"He was stout, solid, square at the base and across 
the shoulders. The neck, chest, body, and thighs were 
powerful, with something of Mirabeau's amplitude, but 
without heaviness. The soul was apparent, and seemed 
to carry everything lighth*, gayty, like a supple cover- 
ing, not in the least like a burden. His size seemed to 
give him power, not to deprive him of it. His short 
arms gesticulated easily ; he talked as an orator speaks. 
His voice resounded with the somewhat vehement en- 
ergj T of his lungs, but it had neither roughness, nor 
sarcasm, nor anger in it; his legs, on which he rather 
swayed himself, bore the torso easily ; his hands, which 
were large and plump, expressed his thought as he 
waved them. Such was the outward man in that robust 
frame. But in presence of the face it was difficult to 
think of the structure. That speaking face, from which 
it was not easy to remove one's eyes, charmed and fas- 
cinated 3'ou ; his hair was worn in thick masses ; his 
black eyes pierced you like darts dipped in kindliness ; 
they entered confidingly into 3'ours like friends. His 
cheeks were full and rudely ; the nose well modelled, 
though rather long ; the lips finely outlined, but full and 
raised at the corners ; the teeth irregular and notched. 
His head was apt to lean to one side, and then, when 
the talk excited him, it was lifted quickly with an heroic 
sort of pride. But the dominant expression of his face, 
greater even than that of intellect, was the manifesta- 
tion of goodness and kindheartedness. He won 3-our 
mind when he spoke, but he won your heart when he 



Honor e de Balzac. 125 

was silent. No feeling of envy or hatred could have 
been expressed by that face ; it was impossible that 
it should seem otherwise than kind. But the kindness 
was not that of indifference ; it was loving kindness, 
conscious of its meaning and conscious of others ; it 
inspired gratitude and frankness, and defied all those 
who knew him not to love him. A childlike merriment, 
was in his aspect ; here was a soul at pla}' ; he had 
dropped his pen to be happy among friends, and it was 
impossible not to be j'03'ous where he was." 

During the summers he went into the country, stay- 
ing chiefly with friends of his family who were also 
devoted friends of his own : Madame Carrand at An- 
gouleme, Monsieur cle Margonne of Sache, near Tours, 
Madame de Berny at Saint-Firmin. Some of his noblest 
books were written at Angouleme and Sache. These 
were pleasures that cost him little, but his first journey 
into other lands, in September, 1832, was another thing, 
and it is touching to see the gratitude with which he 
thanks his mother (in the letter his sister quotes) for 
affording him that pleasure. 

By this time his literaiy success and his personal 
qualities had brought him into social life. With the 
Duchesse d'Abrantes (better known as Madame J 11 not), 
a friend of his sister, he was already intimate. Many 
of his letters to her, beginning in 1828, are given in his 
correspondence. They are frank and friendly ; at first 
they relate chiefly to herself and her books, in the pub- 
lication of which he seems to have assisted ; later he 
tells of his own work and discusses subjects. The tone 
is sincere and affectionate, and grateful for her regard 
for him. " The friendship you deign to offer me," he 



126 Honor e de Balzac. 

writes, "is a chimera long sought b} T me ; from my 
earliest days in college I have desired, to possess, not 
man}" friends, but a friend (u?i ami). . . . You are 
unhappy, you say, and without the hope of another 
dawn ; but remember that in the soul are many spring- 
tides and fresh mornings. Your past life cannot be 
characterized in language ; it is now a memory, and 
you cannot judge of the future by such a past. How 
man}- human beings have renewed their lives and made 
them beautiful and sweet when farther on in life than 
you are now. All we are is in the soul ; are 3'ou cer- 
tain that yours has had its full development? do you 
breathe-in air through every pore of it? do your eyes 
see all the}' can see?" Of himself he says: "I am 
old in suffering ; you would not guess my age from my 
lively face. I cannot say that I have had, like you, 
reverses, for I have alwaj's been bowed down beneath 
a cruel weight. Perhaps this will seem to 3*ou exag- 
geration, a method of obtaining your interest; no, for 
nothing can give you an idea of m} T life up to my 
twent} T -third year. I am sometimes surprised that I 
have nothing now to struggle against but outward mis- 
fortune. You maj' question all about me and 3 T ou will 
never gain an}' light on the cause of my unhappiness. 
Some there are who die and the physician himself 
is unable to discover what malady has carried them 
off." 

During these years, beginning with 1831, many 
women of rank and distinction, as well as others in 
humble life, wrote to him anonymously, impelled to do 
so b} T their interest in his books. " A cloud of letters" 
are still in existence, but they tell nothing; they are 



Honore de Balzac. 127 

not the letters of women who had a part, either great 
' or small, in his time or in his thoughts. From these 
must be distinguished the anon3'mous letters of three 
women, two of whom had an ultimate influence on his 
life. His answers to the third (who signed herself 
Louise) are given in his correspondence. It is charac- 
teristic of his nature that although these letters to 
Louise covered a period of two years, and the lady's 
name was not revealed to him, yet, having on one occa- 
sion the opportunity to discover who she was, his deli- 
cate sense of honor led him to forego it. 1 Madame 
Hanska, nee Comtesse Rzewuska, who seventeen years 
-later became his wife, wrote to him in 1832, after read- 
ing the Medecin de Campagne, and signed herself 
" l'Etrangere." She was a Pole by birth, married to 
a Russian gentleman owning vast possessions in the 
province of Kiew, where the family usually resided on 
an estate named Wierzschovnia, which was more like 
a small principality than the home of private persons. 
Monsieur Hanski, being very much older than his wife, 
and greatly occupied w T ith the care of his property, 
allowed her, from time to time, to travel without him 
for the purpose of educating their onlj r child, a daugh- 
ter. Her intercourse with Balzac, begun by letter in 
1832, and strengthened by occasional meetings in Vienna 
and elsewhere, continued in a friendly manner but with 

1 It must be said, however, that the letters to Louise have an 
artificial ring to them. The reader cannot help asking how they 
came to be published. As the lady never made herself known to 
Balzac, is it likely that she sent his letters to the publishers of 
his Correspon dance ? Can they have been intended for incorpora- 
tion with some tale left unfinished among his papers ? 



128 Honor e de Balzac, 

some relaxation on his part between 1838 and 1843, 
the period of Monsieur Hanski's death, after which 
time it grew closer, and ended in being the abiding 
and final influence on his life. To his later years the 
history of what she was to him properly belongs. 

The other anonymous correspondent, of 1831, proved 
to be the Duchesse de Castries, daughter of the Due 
de Mailly, a relation of the Fitz-Jameses and the Mont- 
morencys, and all the bluest blood of the faubourg 
Saint-Germain. She was parted from her husband and 
lived an artificial life, which was made picturesque by 
a semi-invalidism caused bj- a fall from her horse and 
a consequent injury to the spine. She received her- 
friends lying on a reclining chair in a small salon full 
of antique furniture, old velvet cushions, and screens of 
the seventeenth centuiy. She was about thirty years 
of age ; her beauty, more Roman than Greek, was 
noble and distinguished ; her high, white forehead, 
crowned with auburn hair, and the ruby-colored gown 
she was fond of wearing made her the living presenta- 
tion of a portrait by Titian. 

There is no doubt that Madame de Castries had a 
marked influence, though it cannot be called an impor- 
tant one, on Balzac's life. She was of great service to 
his work, for she brought him into the sphere of the 
faubourg Saint-Germain, and made known to him its 
manners and customs, just as Madame G-aj' and Ma- 
dame d'Abrantes had been the means of revealing to 
him the Directory and the Empire. Moreover she 
affected his imagination and gratified his naturally 
artistic taste. The journey to Switzerland was made 
at her suggestion. She was then on her way to Italy 



Honore de Balzac. 129 

with her brother-in-law, the Due de Fitz-James, and his 
wife. Madame Surville has told us that her brother 
was unable to accept their proposal to go with them to 
Italy on account of the expense ; others have said 
that the real cause was a rupture between the duchess 
and Balzac at Geneva, where they parted. This may 
be, but it would seem from the correspondence that his 
feelings cooled gradually ; they did cool undoubtedly 
(though not without suffering on his part), so that 
later, when Madame de Castries evidently wished to 
replace the intimacy on its old footing, he replied to her 
curtly, though with courtes}'. The Duchesse de Lan- 
geais, with its admirable sketch of the faubourg Saint- 
Germain, is, by his own admission, derived from his 
intercourse with Madame de Castries. In a letter to 
Madame Carraud, dated from Sache, July 1832, not 
long before he starts for Aix, he speaks freely of his 
relations to the duchess : — 

"Ah, if they would only have gone to the Pyrenees, 
I could have stopped to see 3 T ou on the way ; but no, 
it is decreed that I must climb to Aix in Savoie after 
one of those aristocratic women whom you, no doubt, 
hold in horror ; the sort of angelic beauty to whom we 
attribute a noble soul ; a true duchess, very disdainful, 
very loving, elegant, coquettish, and witt}*, — like noth- 
ing I have before seen ; a phenomenon of the sort that 
are fast disappearing ; who says she loves me, who 
wishes me to stay with her in a Venetian palace (you 
see I tell you all), and who insists that I am to write 
nothing that is not for her ; one of those women whom 
we are compelled to adore upon our knees if they choose 
that we shall do so ; and whom it is such a pleasure to 



130 HonorS de Balzac. 

conquer, — the woman of dreams, jealous of everything. 
Ah ! how much better I should be at Angouleme, very 
sage, very tranquil, listening to the whirr of the mill- 
wheels, muddying m}^ hands in gathering truffles, learn- 
ing of you to pocket billiard-balls, and laughing and 
talking." 

Later he writes from Aix, still to Madame Carraud : 
"I came here to find little and much. Much, be- 
cause I am with an amiable and graceful woman ; little, 
because she will never love me. Why did you send me 
to Aix ? From my little room I see the whole valley ; 
I get up pitilessly at five, and work before my window 
till half-past five at night. M} T breakfast, an egg, comes 
from the club. Madame de Castries sends me coffee. 
She is the type of refined women, more so than Madame 
de Beauseant. But is not the charm of these women 
cultivated at the expense of the heart ? ... As I came 
through Lyon I found the proofs of Louis Lambert, 
and, like a bear, I licked my cub." 

It was during the period of their intimacy that Balzac 
became, or attempted to become, a man of fashion. He 
bought horses and a tilbuiy, and was seen in the Bois 
wearing handsome clothes and accompanied by a little 
groom called "Grain-de-mil." But this extravagance 
lasted only a year or two. The horses were first sold 
to save oats, then the tilbury ; but the coat, which 
was blue with brass buttons, must have lasted longer, 
for it appears in several of the satirical tales of the 
day. 

The following letters are to Madame de Castries, 
whom he did not meet personally till March, 1832 : 



HonorS de Balzac. 131 

" Paris, Oct. 5, 1831. 

" Madame, — Your letter was sent to Touraine after 
my return, and as I crossed my correspondence on the 
way I have only just received it. Do not think me 
guilty of negligence. You attribute so many crimes to 
me that I must defend myself from the suspicion of dis- 
courtesy to a lady, even though she be unknown to me. 

" Permit me to use some frankness in replying to your 
frank attacks, and, above all, accept m} r sincere thanks 
for the indirect flatter}' of your criticisms, for they reveal 
to me the strong impression my works have made upon 
you. You place me in the unfortunate position of speak- 
ing about myself, and that is the more embarrassing 
because I address a lady whose age and condition are 
unknown to me. 

"The Physiologie da Maria ge, Madame, is a work 
undertaken in behalf of women. I saw plainly that if, 
in order to spread ideas looking to the emancipation of 
women and their higher education, I began in a com 
mon place manner by announcing vny purpose, I should 
merely be regarded as the ingenious author of a theory 
that was more or less fanciful. It was evident that I 
ought to envelop nry ideas, and mould them, as it were, 
in some new form, either bitter or piquant, which should 
awaken minds and give them reflections to think upon. 
For a woman who has passed through the storms of life 
the meaning of m} T book will be seen to be the attribu- 
tion to husbands of all the faults committed by wives, — 
it is, in short, a great absolution. Next, I put for- 
ward the natural and inalienable rights of women. No 
happy marriage is possible if a perfect knowledge of 
each other's moral nature, habits, and character does 



132 Honor e de Balzac. 

not exist between a man and woman before their union ; 
and I have not shrunk from any of the consequences of 
that principle. Those who know me know that I have 
been faithful to that belief from my earliest years. . . . 

"Thus you see. Madame, that I have changed the 
first crime you charge upon me into a brave effort which 
ought to have won me some encouragement ; but, sol- 
dier as I am at the outposts of a future s}-stem, I meet 
the fate of all such sentinels. I am misjudged, mis- 
understood. Some see only the form ; others see noth- 
ing at all. I shall die in my idea like the soldier in 
his cloak. 

" Immediately after writing the Physiologic I wrote, 
in order to develop my thoughts and cast them into 
young minds by means of striking pictures, the Scenes 
de la vie prime. In that book, full of morality and 
wise counsel, nothing is destroyed, nothing is attacked ; 
I respect beliefs, even those I do not share. I am sim- 
ply the historian, the narrator, and never was virtue 
more held up for reverence than in those pages. And 
now, Madame, since 3*ou oblige me to defend the Peau 
de Chagrin, I shall do it in one word : the work is not 
yet finished. . . . 

" Jesus- Christ en Flandres, & Enfant Ilaudit, Xes 
Proscrits, and other of nry writings, will prove to you 
that I do not lack faith, nor conviction, nor charit}'. I 
plough my furrow conscientiously ; I try to be the man 
of my subject, and to do m} T work with courage and 
preseverance, that is all. The Peau de Chagrin is in- 
tended to portray the present age, our life, our egotism ; 
this representation of our types has been misunderstood. 
But my consolation, Madame, will ever be in the sincere 



Honor e de Balzac. 133 

interest that has brought me criticisms made, like yours, 
in good faith and in a friendly manner. Therefore be- 
lieve me when I say that 3-011 r letter, so full of touching 
sentiments worthy of a woman's heart, is not indifferent 
to me ; such far-off sympathy thus excited is a treasure, 
— my only fortune, my purest pleasure. But the pleas- 
ure you have given would be greater still if, instead of 
dwelling chiefly on the necessitated picture of a woman 
famous for never having loved, you had turned to her 
who is sanctified through the noblest devotion of woman- 
hood, through her artless love and the rich poetry of her 
heart. For me Pauline lives — even more beautiful. If 
I have made her a vision, an illusion, it is that none may" 
possess my secret. ..." 

"March, 1834. 

" Seraphita is advancing ; she will appear at the end 
of the month. The work has been crushing, terrible. 
I have worked, and shall work night and day over it. I 
have made, unmade, remade it ; and as in Paris ridicule 
usually takes the place of comprehension, I hope for 
nothing but a far-off, tardy success. The book will be 
appreciated in the future, and here and there even now. 
It will be the book of souls who love to lose themselves 
in the spaces of the Infinite. There is a chapter, the 
sixth, the Path to Heaven, which will give me, forever, 
all truly pious souls. 

" Why do }'ou think I am still in the rue Cassini ? I 
am nearer or farther from you than that, according to 
the fancy of the moment. I do not like your sadness ; 
I should scold you if you were here ; I should pose 30U 
on a large sofa where you would sit like a fairy in the 
midst of her palace, and I should tell you that to live 



134 Honore de Balzac. 

in this life we must love, and that } t ou do not love. A 
deep affection is the bread of the soul ; when the soul 
is not fed it weakens like the body. . . . 

" I went out yesterday and saw the two caricatures of 
me by Dantan. Send to Susse for them, and you will 
see how droll the} T are. Next week I sit for m} T picture 
to please a painter, who asked to do it, and I weakly 
consented. All this is very petty, is it not? it seems 
the more so to one who has risen with the mystics to 
the skies. 

" The noble figure of womanhood which I promised 
in the preface, and which piques 3-our curiosity, is half 
done. The book is called Le Lys dans la Vallee. I 
ma} T be wrong, but I think it will cause the shedding of 
many tears. I know that in writing it I have shed 
mairv myself." 

" October 5, 1835. 

" Madame, — My doctor imperatively ordered change 
of air ; I left all letters behind me, and started for 
Touraine. On m3 T return I found the two you have 
written to me, also one from M. le Due de Fitz James. 

" Have the kindness to present to the duke my thanks 
for his friendly invitation, and m} T regrets that I cannot 
accept it. I have plunged back into work necessitated 
by pitiless obligations. The bell has sounded in nry 
cloister, and I must finish, for the 'Revue,' the paint- 
ing of a feeling so great that it survives all shocks ; 
it comes from a spring whence man, the ungrateful, is 
ever drawing, }~et never draining its source." 

His life-long and, possibly, truest friend was Madame 
Carraud, nee Tourangin, the wife of Commandant Car- 



Honor e de Balzac. 135 

raud, the head of the military school at Saint Cyr, and 
- afterwards in charge of the government powder-works 
at Angouleme. She was the intimate friend of his sis- 
ter, and about six 3-ears older than himself. He speaks 
of her, judging from a social point of view, as a bril- 
liant mind and noble heart, running to waste in the 
narrow sphere of Angouleme. To her he went for rest 
and sympathy ; she sustained his mind in its darkest 
moments, a service he never forgot, and fearlessly ad- 
vised or rebuked him as her true affection and sound 
judgment dictated. After the events of July, 1830, she 
and her husband, with other influential friends, were 
anxious that he should be chosen deputy at the com- 
ing elections. He allowed his name to be put up both 
at Angouleme and at Cambrai, but was not elected 
at either place. Some of his letters to Madame Car- 
raud are therefore on politics. The following was writ- 
ten, it must be remembered, when France was just 
beginning to try one of her many experiments on the 
body politic. 

" November, 1830. 

" The county is now in very serious circumstances. 
I am alarmed at the struggle before it. I see passions 
everywhere, and reason nowhere. If France is con- 
vulsed I shall not be among those who refuse to give 
her their arms or their talents, however much some 
friends may oppose it. 1 It is at such times that science 
and knowledge, the resources of which we have pushed 
so far, together with courage, ought to make France 
triumph. But even then what is to be the upshot of it 

1 He is speaking as a legitimist, and refers to friends who hold 
the same opinions. 



136 Honor 'S de Balzac, 

all? Can we quell the uprising of injured interests 
which are now within the bod}' politic? Ah, the num- 
ber of patriots in whom there is no patriotism is great 
indeed. None are willing to unite patriotism with mod- 
erate principles, the constitutive plan of which I have 
already explained to you. We stand between the ultras 
of liberalism and of legitimacj', who will unite only in 
overthrowing all. 

" Do not accuse me of want of patriotism, because my 
intelligence forces me to take the exact measure of men 
and things. The genius of government lies in bringing 
about a fusion of extremes. That is what Napoleon 
did, also Louis XVIII., — both men of talent ; one never 
understood, the other understood b} T himself onlj'. 
Each held all parties in hand, one b} T force the other by 
craft. To-day we have, for our sins, a government 
without a policy\ This is a state of things to ruin us. 
Eveiy day it deprives me of some hope. Therefore, you 
see, I am for the consolidation of interests. If you 
were in Paris, in the midst of men and circumstances, 
your solitude politics would soon change. You w 7 ould 
not be here a minute without a shock. . . . 

" I own to you frankly that I cannot conceive how any 
one can expect a representative government to exist 
without the differences of opinion which are the basis 
on which it rests. The tempest that is blowing to-day 
will always blow. You are supposing the natural 
action of the present government to be its misfortune. 
Now, without wishing to defend my ideas, let me tell 
you in a few words the sj'stem of government to which 
my whole life is ready to subscribe. It is the profession 
of a faith that is unalterable and quite possible of ac- 



Honore de Balzae. 137 

complishment ; it is nry political conscience, my scheme 
and my thought, to which I have as much right as 
others to whom I give the same liberty of opinion. My 
political life will be entirely devoted to the furtherance 
of such thoughts, and to their development. When I 
speak seriously on the future of my country there is no 
word or writing of mine that is not imbued with these 
principles. 

"France ought to be a constitutional monarch}', with 
an hereditary royal family, and a chamber of peers en- 
dowed with extraordinary powers, representing landed 
property, etc. ; with all possible guarantees for heredi- 
tary rights and for privileges, the nature of which should 
be discussed. Then there should be a, second chamber, 
elective, and representing the interests of the interme- 
diate masses which stand between the highest social 
positions and what we call the People. The bod} T of 
the laws and the spirit of them should tend to enlighten 
to the utmost the People, that is, persons who own 
nothing, workmen, proletaries, etc., so as to advance 
them as soon as possible into the easj' circumstances of 
the intermediate class. But, while so doing, the Peo- 
ple should be kept under a powerful control, so that its 
individuals may be able to find light, help, and protec- 
tion ; and that no ideas, no combinations or intrigues 
should make it turbulent. The greatest liberty should 
be given to the upper class, for it has much to preserve 
and all to lose, and cannot therefore become licentious. 
The government should have all possible power. Thus, 
the government, the upper class, and the middle class 
have each an interest in making the lowest class happy 
and able to rise into the middle class, in which lies the 



138 Honor e de Balzac. 

real power of all States. If rich men, the hereditary 
occupants of the upper chamber, growing corrupt in 
morals, give rise to abuses, we must remember that 
abuses are inseparable from the existence of society 
itself; they must be accepted with their concomitant 
benefits. 

" That is my plan, 1113' thought ; it unites the good and 
philanthropic conditions of several systems. Persons 
may laugh at me and call me a liberal or an aristocrat ; 
I shall not give up that system. I have meditated 
long and deeply on the institutions of society ; this sys- 
tem appears to me — not the best, but — the least 
defective." 

The period when Balzac in early manhood came upon 
the scene of political events was just before and after 
the Revolution, if it can be called such, of July, 1830. 
He considered himself connected with the old regime 
through his family, his father having been secretar}' of 
the Council under Louis XVI. ; but besides this gen- 
eral bias, he had that of a strong personal belief in 
authority, and in the duty of maintaining it. He be- 
lieved in two great vital powers for the control of man- 
kind, and he thus expresses his belief in the Preface to 
the Comedie Humaine : — 

" Christianity, and especially Catholicism, being (as I 
have said in the Medecin de Campagne) a complete 
system for the repression of the selfish interests of man- 
kind, is the strongest element of the social order. If 
we study carefully a representation of Society moulded, 
as it were, upon the living form, with all its good and 
all its evil, we shall find that while thought — or rather 



Honor & de Balzac. 139 

passion, which is thought and feeling combined — is the 
social element and bond, it is also an element of de- 
struction. In this respect the social life is like the 
physical life : races and men attain longevity only by 
the non-exhaustion of the vital force. Consequently, 
instruction, or, to speak more correctly, religious educa- 
tion, is the great principle of the life of Society, the 
only means of diminishing the total of evil and aug- 
menting the total of good in human life. Thought, the 
fountain of all good and of all evil, cannot be trained, 
mastered, and directed except by religion ; and the 
only possible religion is Christianity, which created the 
modern world and will preserve it. From it sprang 
the need of the monarchical principle ; in fact, 
Christianity and monarch} 7, are twin principles. As to 
the limits in which both should be held and regulated 
lest the}* develop to their inherent conclusions, this brief 
preface is not the place for such discussion. Neither 
can I enter upon the religious and political dissensions 
of the present day. I write by the light of two eternal 
truths — religion and monarchy : two necessities pro- 
claimed by contemporaneous events, and towards which 
every man of sound judgment will endeavor to bring 
back this nation." 

Such were his principles ; and he believed they would 
best promote the welfare of those for whom his sympa- 
thies were strongest, — the poor and the defenceless. No 
man has ever shown more feeling for those oppressed 
by fate or circumstances than Balzac ; he wrote of their 
helpless sorrows with the red blood of his heart. No 
matter how sternly he exposed their vice and their short- 
comings, we see that his sympathies are with them, — not 



140 Honore de Balzac. 

in a weak and commiserating way, but with compre- 
hension of the causes which make them what they are, 
and the most earnest belief that his political creed 
would best lift up and rescue them. He may be right, 
but in his as in all creeds there is one element not duly 
allowed for, — human nature. Balzac had no leaning 
at all to the visionary beliefs and projects of the rest- 
less young minds of the day, heirs to ideas repressed 
by the strong hand of Napoleon and kept under by the 
Restoration. In 1830 the} T saw, or believed they saw, 
their opportunity. While despising the Orleans regime 
and laughing at the king and his personal submissions, 
they made themselves feared in the press in a short- 
lived way. With them and their ideas Balzac had no 
sympathy. He hated their theories and their socialisms, 
and, above all, what he called their Ci experiments on 
millions of ignorant and excitable natures." It is well, 
perhaps, that he was not able to cany out his desire to 
add the title of a great citizen to that of a great writer. 
In this best of all possible worlds politics require poli- 
ticians, and he could never have reduced either his 
clear-sightedness or his tongue to its hypocrisies. 
" France," he said, " is being saved and lost perpet- 
ually. If she wants to be saved indeed let her go back 
to the laws of God. I tell you I know those laws ; 
under one regime or under another you will have to 
come back to the law of laws, — unity of will." 

The following letters are still to Madame Carraud : — 

"June, 1832. 
"As for politics, have faith that I shall conduct 
myself under the inspiration of a high and stern sense 



Honor e de Balzac. 141 

of right; and, in spite of Monsieur Carraud's anathema 
on journalists, believe that I will never write or 
act except under conviction. M} 7 political life and 
ideas will not be understood in a moment. If I have 
ever a part in the government of the country I shall 
be judged later, and I am not afraid. I care more 
for the esteem of a few persons — among whom you 
hold the first rank as one of the finest minds and 
most elevated souls I have ever known — than for the 
estimation of the crowd, for which, to tell the truth, I 
have profound contempt. There are promptings, how- 
ever, which we must obey ; something irresistibly im- 
pels me to seek fame and power. It is not a happy 
life. Within me is the worship of woman, and a need 
of love which has never yet been completely satisfied. 
Despairing of ever being loved and understood by the 
woman of whom I dreamed, never having met her but 
under one form, in nry heart, I desire to fling myself 
into the whirlpool of political passious as I have done 
into the lurid and parching atmosphere of literary ambi- 
tion. I ma}' fail in both, but, believe me, if I do seek 
to live in the life of the centuiy, instead of passing 
through it obscure and happy, it is precisely because 
pure and unpretending happiness has failed me. Yes, 
you are right in all you say. If I met with a woman 
and a fortune I could resign myself very easily to 
domestic happiness ; but where am I to find her? what 
parents will believe in a literary fortune ? It would fill 
me with despair to owe nry future to a woman I did not 
love. Believe that in the desert of my life such friend- 
ships as yours, and the certainty of finding an asylum 
in a loving heart are the sweetest consolations that 



142 Honore de Balzac. 

could be given to me. My strongest desire is for a 
country life, — but always with good neighbors and a 
happy home. In whatever land I could obtain this I 
would take it ; I would do no more literature, except 
as an amateur, to please nryself and not become inac- 
tive — if indeed one ever could be idle with trees to 
plant and to look at. To devote myself to the happi- 
ness of a woman has been my ceaseless dream ; and I 
suffer because I have not realized it ; but I cannot 
conceive of love and marriage in poverty." 

" March, 1833. 

" I live in an atmosphere of thoughts, ideas, concep- 
tions, plans, and labors, which jostle and boil and 
sparkle in my head till I am half crazy. But nothing 
reduces m} T flesh ; I am the best portrait of a monk 
ever seen since the earliest days of monasteries. 

"As for my soul, it is profoundly sad. My work 

alone enables me to live. Is there no woman for me in 

this world? Must I drop from such crushing toil to 

nothing? Shall I never have beside me the tender -and 

caressing spirit of woman, for whom I have done so 

much? " 

" August, 1833. 

" You are right, dear, noble soul, in loving Madame 
de Bernj'. In each of }'ou are striking resemblances of 
thought, — the same love of the right ; the same en- 
lightened liberality, same love of progress, same desires 
for the good of the masses ; same elevation of soul and 
of thought, the same delicac}^ in joxxy natures. And for 
that I love you much. 

" The Medicin de Campagne will reach you next 
week ; it has cost me ten times the work that Louis 



HonorS de Balzac. 143 

Lambert did. There is not a sentence, not an idea, 
which has not been viewed and reviewed, read and re- 
read and corrected ; the labor was frightful. I may 
now die in peace. I have done a great work for my 
country. To my mind it is better to have written this 
book than to have made laws or won battles. It is 
the Gospel in action." 

" October, 1833. 
" Do you know how the Medecin has been re- 
ceived ? By a torrent of insults. The three news- 
papers of my own party which have spoken of it 
have done so with the utmost contempt for the 
work and its author ; the others I don't know about. 
But I do not mind it much ; } T ou are my public, — you 
and a few choice souls whom I desire to please, but 
you above all, whom I am so proud to know ; you 
whom I have never seen or listened to without gaining 
some good ; you who have the courage to help me in 
pulling up the weeds in my garden ; you who encour- 
age me to perfect myself ; you who resemble the angel 
to whom I owe all; you, so good to my badnesses/ I 
alone know with what rapidity I turn to you and seek 
for your encouragement when some sharp arrow has 
wounded me ; I am like the ringdove, seeking its nest. 
For you I feel an affection like none other ; one which 
can have no rival and no counterpart. It is so good to 
be near 3'ou ! From afar I can tell j~ou all that I think 
of your soul and of your life without fear of being 
silenced. God knows there is no one who desires that 
your path here below be happy more than I do ; would 
that I could send you the jo} T s } t ou need, just as my heart 
sends up its ardent prayers for your happiness. Yes, 



144 Honore de Balzac. 

think that in this volcanic Paris there is a being who 
thinks often of you and of all that is dear to you ; who 
would gladly put away from your life whatever may 
trouble it ; who appreciates you at your true value, — a 
being with a heart ever young and full of sincere 
friendship for you, a heart that shows its real self to 
none but you., and a few of those women who can under- 
stand sorrows." 

" December, 1833. 

" I have nothing to sa}- against your criticisms on 
Eugenie Grandet except that facts are against }*ou. 
There is a grocer at Tours who keeps a shop and 
has eight millions. M. Eynard, a pedler, has twenty ; 
he was known to keep thirteen millions in gold in his 
house. He invested them in the public funds in 
1814, and now has twenty millions. However, in the 
next edition, I will lower Grandet's fortune by six 
millions, and I will answer the rest of your criticisms 
at Frapesle. Meantime I thank you for them ; but 
nothing can tell }~ou how grateful I am for the maternal 
care which your remarks prove to me. 

" Yes, count upon it, I am going to Frapesle, and I 
hope that I can persuade Madame de Berny to accom- 
pauj T me. On my return here }'esterda} r I found her so 
ill that I was seized with a panic ; my mind is full of 
anguish. Her life is so much to mine. Oh ! no one 
can form a true idea of that deep affection which has 
sustained all my efforts, and comforts all my pains at 
every moment. You know something of it, } T ou who 
understand friendship so well, you who are so kind and 
affectionate. As soon as I am relieved of anxiety I 
will write you again. My Seraphita is already far ad- 



Honore de Balzac. 1-15 

vanced. The fiasco of Louis Lambert and the Mede- 
cin de Campagne grieved me ; but I have chosen my 
path ; nothing shall discourage me." 

" , 1834. 

" Germany has bought two thousand copies of the 
pirated Louis Lambert; France bought only two 
hundred of the real one ! And yet, I am writing 
Seraphita, a work as much above Louis Lambert as 
Louis Lambert is above Gaudissart, — which I am 
told did not please you. We will talk about that. It 
is written that I shall never have complete happiness, 
freedom, liberty, except in perspective. But, dear, I 
can at least say this, with all the tender effusions of my 
heart, — that in the course of my long and painful way, 
four noble beings have held out their hands to me, have 
encouraged, loved, and pitied me ; that yours is one of 
those hearts which have the unalterable privilege of 
priority over all my affections ; in the silent hours when 
I look within me, the thought of you brings me rich 
memories. Yes, the egoism of poets and artists is a 
passion for art which holds their feelings in abeyance. 
But you have ever the right to claim me ; all I have is 
3'ours." 

" November, 1834. 

" None of my friends realize how my work grows ; I 
now need eighteen hours a day for it. Also, I am try- 
ing to evade the national guard duty, which would kill 
me ; and so I have done as the painters do, invented 
pass- words, which are known only to such persons as 

seriously want to see me." 

" December, 1835. 
4 'Never has the torrent which bears me onward 
been so rapid ; no more terribly majestic work has 
10 



146 Honore de Balzac. 

ever compelled the human brain. I go to my toil as 
a gambler to cards. I sleep only five hours, and work 
eighteen; I shall end by killing myself — but the 
thought of you refreshes me sometimes. In another 
year I ma} T reasonably hope to be out of debt ; the hap- 
piness of owing nothing, which I thought impossible, is 
no longer a chimera. I shall pay my debts and buy La 
Grenadiere. Another article in the 'Revue,' like the 
Memoir es de Deux Jeunes Mariees (which appears in 
Februaiy, 1836), will bring me eight thousand francs. 
God grant that my fame be not mere reputation, and 
that reputation a fashion, and that fashion fleeting ! " 

" Les Jardies, near Sevres (Seine et-Oise), , 1838. 

" This is my address for a very long time, thrice dear 
one, for my house is almost finished, and I am already 
living in it. Three rooms, one above the other : salon 
on the ground-floor, 1113' bedroom above that, my study 
on the upper floor, — all three communicating b}' means 
of a ladder to which is given the name of staircase. 
Such is the abode of }*our friend. Around it is a walk 
which winds over an acre of ground inclosed by walls, 
where trees and flowers and shrubs cannot be planted 
till next November. Then, about sixt}' feet away, is 
a detached building containing stable, coach-house, 
kitchen, etc., one large room, and others for the ser- 
vants. Such is Les Jardies. This parrot's perch on 
which I roost, with its tiny garden, and the servants' 
quarters, is situated near the middle of the valley of 
Ville-d'Avray, but in the township of Sevres behind 
the park of Saint-Cloud. It stands on the hillside, and 
faces south, with the loveliest view in the world ; it has 



Honore de Balzac. 147 

a pump which is some da}' to be hidden by clematis and 
other climbing-plants, a pretty brook, a future world of 
our flowers, silence, and — forty-five thousand francs 
to pay for it ! You understand. Yes, the folly is done, 
completed ! Don't talk to me about it. I have got to 
pay for it, and so I am beginning to sit up all night. 

I have been to Sardinia, and I am not dead. I found 
the twelve hundred thousand francs I divined were there, 
but a Genoese had got hold of them by a biglietto reale 
only three da}'s before m} 7 arrival. I had a sort of 
vertigo, and that ended it. You shall hear all about 
my journey when we meet. It is curious enough, I can 
tell you." 

"Les Jardies, March, 1839. 

"Dear, what you ask is absolutely impossible; two 
or three months from now nothing would be more easy. 
To you, sister of my soul, I can confide my last secret; 
I am in the depths of misery. All the walls of Les 
Jardies are crumbling down, through the builder's fault ; 
he has not put any foundations ; and this disaster, though 
he alone is to blame, falls on me to repair, for he does 
not own a sou, and I had only paid him eight thousand 
francs on account. Do not call me imprudent, cara, I 
ought to have been rich by this time ; I have done mira- 
cles of work, but all my intellectual walls have toppled 
over now, together with the stone ones. I have come 
clown like a foundered horse, — I need to go to Frapesle 
to rest myself." 

In these letters we find Balzac's first mention of 
Madame de Berny, whom he regarded as the guardian 
angel of his life. He must have destroyed all letters 



148 Honore de Balzac. 

and papers addressed to her, so that the sacredness of 
their intercourse might not be exposed to curious eyes. 
Like Madame Carraud, she was the friend of his family, 
and some years older than himself. Her husband was 
Monsieur Alexandre de Berny (to whom Madame Fir- 
miani is dedicated). They lived on a small estate at 
Saint-Firmin in the Seine-et-Oise, spending part of the 
3'ear in Paris or its neighborhood. During the time 
the de Balzac family were at Villeparisis, the de Bernys 
had a house there, and this was the beginning of their 
intercourse. As no written record of Balzac's friend- 
ship with Madame de Bern}- exists which connects it in 
anj r definite wa} r with the outward events of his life, 
it is best to leave all further mention of that affection 
until the end, when we ma} 7 be more able to judge of 
its influence on his life. 



Honore de Balzac. 149 



CHAPTER VI. 

LITERARY LIFE. 

During the thirteen years from 1830 to 1842, Balzac 
being then thirty-one to forty -three years of age, his 
great work was done. There are signs in 1843 that his 
health was beginning to fail; he could not force him- 
self to work as he once did ; periods of stagnation be- 
gan to set in, although at times he recovered his full 
vigor, and three of his greatest works were written 
during the last eight years of his life, — namely, Les 
Paysans, and Les Parents Pauvres : Le Cousin Pons, 
and La Cousine Bette. 

His external litera^ life was not a happy one. He 
had many publishers, and did not continue on good 
terms with any of them. It is obvious to those who 
look back upon the history of these troubles that they 
were, in the first instance, the natural and unavoidable 
outcome of Balzac's method of work, and the clash of 
interests that resulted from it. There cannot be a 
doubt that Balzac was a thorn in the flesh of his pub- 
lishers. We have only to read Theophile Gautier's ac- 
count of his manner of correcting proof — or rather of 
hammering out his ideas on the anvil of ten proofs, the 
sparks of his corrections flying wildly about them — to 
feel that the flesh and blood of printers and publishers 
could hardly bear the trial. Werdet (who bought up 



150 Honore de Balzac. 

the interests of other publishers in 1834, and was his 
sole publisher till 1837) sa}'s that the difficulty with 
proofs "was at the bottom of his troubles with publish- 
ers and editors, who were forced to pay the enormous 
costs of correction." This statement is not strictly true, 
for Balzac mentions more than once in his letters that 
he has had to pay over a thousand francs for proof- 
corrections ; and he specially mentions the liberality of 
Madame Bechet (Werdet being at the time her business 
manager), who assumed four thousand francs for cor- 
rections which were justly chargeable to him. But, in 
an}' case, the trial of printing for him must have been 
great, and he tells himself how, entering a printing- 
office unexpectedly, he overheard a compositor exclaim- 
ing : " I 've done iny hour of Monsieur de Balzac ; who 
takes him next ? " 

Another cause of anmyyance to his publishers was 
Balzac's dehry in supplying manuscript. He would 
not let an3'thing go from him until he felt it was the 
best he could do ; the conscience of his work was be- 
fore all else, and his mind refused to be forced to finish 
a book to order. "I am read\*," he says, replying to 
Alphonse Levavasseur, who had been more than usually 
urgent, "to send you the copy on the loth; but it will 
be the most infamous murder of a book that was ever 
committed. There is in me a feeling, I don't know 
what it is, which prevents me from consciously doing 
wrong. The question here is the future of a book, — 
am I to make it unworthy trash, or a work for the 
shelves of a library? The cop} T is lying there on my 
desk, but I am stopped short b} T a sketch to complete, 
an idea to develop, by — but it would take me till 



Honore de Balzac. 151 

morning to explain how that work hangs between suc- 
cess and a gibbet at every page. You must not think 
this letter an excuse. I do work as hard, and in as 
concentrated a way, as any human creature could do ; 
but I am the very humble servant of inspiration, and 
the vixen has her moments of ill-humor." 

He was in the habit of carrying on several works at 
a time, apparently resting his mind by turning from 
one to another, and taking each up as he felt himself 
inspired with its subject. Some of these books being 
in course of current publication in reviews and weekly 
papers, such delay's were, of course, a fruitful source of 
quarrel and complaint. 

If we are to believe Werdet, 1 Balzac sold the right 
to publish his books under certain invariable conditions, 
namely : those issued periodicallj' in reviews were con- 
trolled by the editors during publication and for three 
months after the date of the concluding number ; those 
issued in book form belonged to the publishers for one 
year only. There is evidence that his rights over his 
books were strong and lasting. He held a different 
position towards publishers from that of writers in the 

1 Nine years after Balzac's death Werdet published a book 
about him : Portrait intime de Balzac ; sa vie, son huraeur, et 
son caractere ; par Edmond Werdet, 1 vol., Silvestre, Paris, 1859. 
It is worth reading by those who understand Balzac, for its com- 
ical malignity. If the particular charge which Werdet brings 
against him be carefully read, the dates collated, the whole brought 
within compass, and stripped of Werdet's malicious diffuseness, 
it will be found that Balzac behaved justly and with forbearance, 
and that Werdet's real grievance was that in a moment of temper 
he killed the goose that gave him golden eggs, and was taken at 
his word. 



152 Honore de Balzac. 

present day, who seem to be the hirelings of capitalists. 
According to French law, after a book was in tj'pe it 
could not be printed without a written order (bon cl 
tirer) from the author ; neither could it be published 
without the same. The publisher was in fact the au- 
thors business agent ; making his profits, but not con- 
trolling the propert}\ The accounts were open to both 
parties, and when the time for settlement came author 
and publisher went over the books together and settled 
the business (see Werdet). This appears to have been 
the usual method of publication, thus placing the author 
in an honorable position towards his work and towards 
the public ; and French law, which has thrown many 
safeguards around an author, protected him in it. 
Balzac was a strong stickler for his rights, and when 
he thought them infringed he appealed to the law, 
which he had at his fingers' ends. 

Nowhere among the multiplicity of statements on the 
monej' affairs of his books do we find a clear account 
of the money he derived from them ; in fact, his 
methods of publication were so involved that it would 
be impossible to discover the profits of each book. 
Werdet carefully keeps back, in his wordy narrative, the 
sums he paid to Balzac, and his own profits, but he 
mentions that the second edition of the Medecin de 
Campagne was sold in eight days, Le Pere Goriot 
in six, and Seraphita before the book was published, 
with two hundred and fifty copies promised ; and he 
says, in a rather casual way at the close of his book, 
u I estimate at 450,000 francs, at least, the sum which 
Balzac derived from the profits of his books up to the 
time of our rupture (1838). I could give the details, 



Honore de Balzac. 153 

but that might seem useless. To this already large 
sum must be added the product of his other works, 
published from 1838 to the time of his death." Leon 
Gozlan differs wholly from this estimate, and says that 
during the first half of Balzac's literary life his work 
was not lucrative, and that if we exclude the returns of 
two or three fortunate books, the average of his literary 
profits during his whole life did not exceed ten or twelve 
thousand francs a year. This is undoubtedly a blunder 
which can be disproved by Balzac's correspondence. 
The real truth probably lies between the statements of 
the two men, who both wrote from a parti pris. 1 

The events of July, 1830, were injurious to publishing 
interests, owing parti}'' to the stringency of money and 
the stoppage of all credit for three years. Authors 
and publishers suffered much from it, and also from the 
pirated editions which now began to appear in Belgium. 
Balzac mentions in a letter that two thousand copies of 
one of his books had been sold in Brussels against two 
hundred in Paris. The same wrong was also com- 
mitted in the provinces of France, where, on one oc- 
casion, ten thousand copies of M. de Lamennais's 

1 Balzac intime ; en pantoufles et chez lui, par Leon Gozlan, 
1 vol., Librairie Illustree, Paris, no date, — the work of a man who 
saw only one limited side of Balzac, and exaggerated that for the 
purpose of writing a smart book. Monsieur Marcel Barriere tells 
us, in his able commentary on Balzac, that foreigners at first ap- 
preciated Balzac better than the French, who need, before all 
things, esprit, in which, he says, Balzac was lacking. For this 
reason, perhaps, Frenchmen may read Monsieur Leon Gozlan's 
book with more interest than a foreigner, to whom it seems a tor- 
rent of rather vulgar and very self-conscious writing, in which 
Balzac himself is lost. 



154 • Honore de Balzac. 

" Paroles d'un Crwant" were printed and sold without 
the writer's knowledge. This wrong led Balzac to seek 
admission to the Societe des Gens-de-lettres, then a 
comparatively weak body, which somewhat resented, it 
appears, his hitherto slight appreciation of it and now 
feared to be involved in his straggles with publishers. 
This feeling lasted but a short time, and later in the 
same }'ear he became its president. His inspiring pres- 
ence instantly gave impetus to the Society, owing to 
his accurate knowledge of the business of publication, 
his rare ability in maintaining an author's rights, and, 
more especially*, his profound conviction of the dignity 
of a man of letters. 1 In the autumn of 1841 Balzac 
resigned from the Societ}-, owing to disagreements on a 
committee he had himself inspired. This committee 
was charged to prepare a manifesto which should cover 
the whole ground of the condition of French literature, 
its right to be considered a power in the State, the 
service it had rendered to the nation and to history 
throughout all time, the slight protection, or even decent 
good-will, which the present government afforded it, 
and the f danger and the shame to France of allowing 
such a state of things. The Societe des Gens-de-lettres 
proposed to present this manifesto to the two Cham- 
bers, and to scatter it broadcast through the coun- 
try, in order to obtain support. But the committee 

1 Those who are interested in the protection of literature should 
read Balzac's articles which were written in the service of the 
Society, viz : Code Litte'raire; Notes sur la propriety htt€raire ; and 
Lettre aux Ecricains Francais du XIX siecle. They will be found 
in the CEuvres completes de H. de Balzac. Edition definitive, 
Calmann Levy, Paris. 



HonorS de Balzac. 155 

were unable to agree on the terms of the document, 
and Balzac, with one other member, resigned from 
the Society, doubts having been thrown on their 
impartiality. 

Literature under Louis-Philippe received but slight 
encouragement. The king, common b} T nature, sought 
only to ingratiate himself with the bourgeoisie, and 
knew and cared little about writers, except as they 
supported him or made him fear them in the press. 
Material interests, solid wealth, limited to the interests 
of its acquisition, ruled the day ; the minds that ruled 
the world, and gave it posterity were, as now, in the 
position of underlings. "These stupid kings," cried 
Balzac to Victor Hugo, " ignore the fact that without us 
the world would know nothing about them. The very 
monuments they put up to their own memory crumble 
away ; the pictures they hang in their museums to show 
the world what they do that is useful and grand don't 
last ; not one is over five centuries old. Without Virgil 
and Horace and Titus Livius and Ovid, who could dis- 
tinguish Augustus from all the other Augustuses, though 
he was the nephew of Caesar? If it were not for that 
little lawyer without a brief, Suetonius, we should n't 
know three Caesars out of the dozen he wrote about ; with- 
out Tacitus we should confound the Romans of his time 
with the northern barbarians ; without Shakspeare all 
the life of the reign of Elizabeth would disappear ; 
without Racine, Corneille, Pascal, La Bruyere, Saint- 
Simon, Moliere, Louis XIV., reduced to his wigs and 
his mistresses, would be no better than a crowned head 
on a sign-post ; and without as Louis-Philippe's 
name would n't be better known to posterity than 



156 Honore de Balzac. 

that of Philippe who keeps the restaurant in the rne 
Montorgueil." 

An amusing account is given by Champfieury of 
Balzac's last meeting with men of letters. It took place 
after the Revolution of 1848, when Balzac chanced to be 
in Paris for a few weeks on his return from Russia. It 
does not come within the chronology of this chapter, but 
as it is allied to the subject of governmental recognition 
of literature an abridgment of Champfleury's narrative 
may be given here. 1 

In May, 1848, M. Ledru-Rollin, being then minis- 
ter of the Interior of the new republic, put an official 
notice in the newspapers inviting literary men, gens-de- 
lettres, to assemble on a certain day in a hall of the 
Institute. About two o'clock of that da} T a mixed and 
very singular company, none of whom seemed to know 
each other, assembled. " Monsieur de Balzac suddenly 
entered, and all present turned to look at the stout 
man, who on that occasion wore gloves and a green 
coat. He glanced rapidly round the hall, and seeing 
me came and took a seat at m} T side. A man mounted 
the platform and announced that he came from M. 
Ledru-Rollin, minister of the Interior, to inquire what 
the government could do in behalf of books of art 
(livres d'art). The term "books of art" roused the 
whole assembly, who began to shout in a manner to 
which the halls of the Institute were little accustomed. 
M. Francis Wey made a clever and truthful speech, in 
which he showed that books of art were an open sore 

1 Grandes Figures, d'hier et d'aujourd'hui, par Champfieury, 
1 vol., Poulet-Malasses, Paris, 1861. This essay should be read 
by all students of Balzac. 



HonorS de Balzac 157 

in literature ; that books of art ate up the profits which 
ought to go to the writers ; that books of art, in short, 
were useless things, and altogether injurious to the in- 
terests of men of letters. Whereupon the assembly gave 
three groans for books of art, and the private secretary 
of M. Ledru-Rollin hastily disappeared, leaving the 
authors to discuss the matter alone. Now it is notice- 
able that the most turbulent of all meetings, where the 
persons present least understand each other, and give 
the worst explanations of their meaning, are those of 
literary men. The wise chairman is he who manages 
to prevent a discussion. Monsieur de Balzac laughed 
immensely at the uproar ; he was pleased as a child 
with the noise, and his stomach shook in his pleated 
trousers. 4 What singular literary men ! ' he said to 
me. ' I don't know one of them ; where do the} 7 come 
from ? do tell me who they are.' I told him the names 
of all I knew. When the tumult had subsided a little, 
the assembly voted to send two delegates to make M. 
Ledru-Rollin understand that books of art were useless 
things, and that he would do much better to encourage 
literature in other ways. M. de Balzac was chosen as 
one of the delegates ; on this he mounted the platform 
and said, aftei thanking the assembly, that he could not 
accept the houor conferred upon him. He pointed out 
that the minister had asked a question of literary men, 
and that it would not do to repl} T to a question with a 
piece of advice. ' Either make no answer,' he said, ' or 
answer about books of art.' The assembly, however, 
sent their advice to the ministry by other delegates ; 
and so ended the sole effort of the republic of liberty, 
equality, and fraternity to benefit literature." 



158 Honore de Balzac. 

Champfleury adds, by the wa}% that Balzac was one 
of the first to enter the Tuileries on the 24th of Februaiy, 
1848, after the flight of Louis-Philippe. He told a 
friend who met him that he had come to get a piece of 
the velvet of the throne. 1 

Another cause of trouble between Balzac and his 
editors and publishers arose from the pernicious system 
of payment that prevailed, — caused, it ma} r be, b} T the 
stringency of money after the revolution of July, but 
none the less dangerous to the interests of both parties. 
Payments were almost invariably made in bills payable 
at distant dates. If a writer needed money, which was 
usually the case, he was subjected to both trouble and 
loss in getting these notes discounted. In Balzac's case 
(probably in that of other writers) such transactions 
were frequent, and the notes sometimes matured and 
came back upon the publishers, before the manuscript 
was delivered to them. This was naturally a cause of 
complaint, and the state of things was complicated by 
his other money difficulties. Much has been written of 
those difficulties. Other parts of his life being in ob- 
scurity, the story of his debts and his struggle to pay 
them has unfortunately acquired undue proportions. 
His own imagination, goaded by a sense of honor which 
all accounts (of enemies as well as friends) attribute to 

1 It may not be impertinent to add here, in a note, that the 
English nurse of the present writer was carried into the Tuileries 
directly after the king's flight by a surging mob of rioters. She 
was brave as a lion; and one of the combatants, seeing her inter- 
est, slashed off a piece of the throne with his sabre and gave it to 
her. This piece, which is of crimson velvet heavily worked in 
gold, is in the possession of the writer. The throne was burned 
that night in the Place du Chateau d'Eau. 



HonorS de Balzac. 159 

him, magnified them. The undiscriminating publica- 
tion of his letters to his mother, directing her in the 
management of his affairs, and sometimes defending 
himself, not without irritation, against what appear to 
have been her nagging complaints, has done his memory 
an injury b} 7 presenting him in a grasping and money - 
getting light. The facts, now seen from a distance, are 
easily understood. He began life under the inspiration 
of an unbounded ambition, quickly handicapped b}* 
debt, with nothing to pay that debt or to live by except 
his pen, and gifted with a high sense of honor. Could 
he have continued to live a garret-life of solitude, he 
might have paid his debts within a certain time and 
gained his freedom. But was it possible for him to 
have lived in that wa} T ? No. Given the man, his 
genius, his ambition, the bent of his mind, which was 
to the study of life, his tastes for the beautiful, the 
intoxication of his first successes, which brought him 
into personal relations with wealth and luxury, and, 
above all, his imagination, it was not possible for the 
historian of human society to live remote from its life ; 
he was of necessity a sharer in it. Debt, as we know, 
thrives upon itself. To meet his obligations and get 
the means of living in the world, he promised books to 
publishers and received advanced payments, on the 
system already mentioned ; and the books were often 
not forthcoming at the promised time. These habits 
and practices made all publishers inimical to him ; 
though it does not anywhere appear, after careful 
study, that his engagements were not fulfilled in the 
end, nor that any publisher or editor suffered b} T him. 
On the contrary, there is more than one instance of his 



160 Honore de Balzac. 

buying back his copy from the editors of reviews who 
were not satisfied, paying for the costs of the parts al- 
ready published. He took back Seraphita in this wa}', 
after three numbers had been published in the " Revue 
de Paris." 

The general dissatisfaction between himself and his 
publishers broke out, finally, in his memorable dispute 
with Buloz, then editor of the " Revue de Paris," and 
also of the "Revue des Deux Mondes." His sister 
gives an account of it in her narrative, but it is well to 
add Werdet's statement of the actual facts ; coming 
from Werdet, who was in position to know them, and 
who would not have spared Balzac had they told 
against him, they are probably correct. 

M. Bnloz having, in 1835, bought Le Lys dans la 
Vallee for the "Revue de Paris," on Balzac's usual 
terms, sold the right of publication to a French review 
at Saint Petersburg, and the book was issued there be- 
fore it was half issued in Paris. Moreover, it was 
printed, not from Balzac's final proofs, on which he had 
given the order to print, but from the first corrected 
proof ; letters were printed as part of the text, the be- 
ginning and end of sentences were omitted, the correc- 
tions and additions were added, not substituted, so that 
twenty pages of the Paris edition were swelled to forty 
pages of the Russian. The injustice was great to Bal- 
zac, who, finding himself unable to get redress, declared 
openly that"M. Buloz had clone injur)" to his, Balzac's, 
reputation, and to the cause of French literature." 
Buloz replied that he had acted within his legal rights, 
which allowed him to publish the book as he saw fit up 
to a period of three months from the last publication in 



Honore de Balzac. 161 

the " Revue de Paris." Balzac tben proposed to com- 
promise the matter by recovering his rights in the book 
when the publication in the " Revue de Paris" ceased. 
Buloz refused. Some of the associates in the " Revue " 
sustained Buloz, others Balzac. The acrimony was 
great ; it led to a series of cabals and hatreds against 
Balzac, who was comparatively defenceless under them. 
Out of the whole newspaper press only one sheet, 
the " Quotidienne," supported him, but that did so 
heartily. Balzac then brought an action against the 
"Revue de Paris," and was sustained in the courts. 
Buloz was condemned to give up the book at once, 
and pay the costs of the suit. Balzac immediately 
rewrote the first chapter, which had already been pub- 
lished in the " Revue ; " Werdet put the whole book in 
type, and three days after the decision was rendered 
eighteen hundred copies out of an edition of two thou- 
sand was sold in two hours. 

At this period Werdet, as Balzac's publisher, was 
admitted to the solitude in which his working days and 
nights were spent, and he gives a little picture of it which 
is worth preserving. "He usually," writes Werdet, 
" went to bed at eight o'clock after a very light dinner, 
and almost invariably was seated before his little 
writing-table bj T two in the morning. Until six his 
lively, active pen (he always used crow-quills) ran at 
full speed over the paper, emitting electric sparks. The 
grating of that pen alone interrupted the monastic si- 
lence of his solitude. At six he took his bath, remain- 
ing in it a whole hour. At eight o'clock Auguste 
brought him a cup of coffee, which he drank without 
sugar. From eight to nine I was admitted to bring 
11 



162 Honore de Balzac. 

him proofs, or take away the corrected ones, and to 
wrest from him, if possible, a few bundles of manu- 
script. The labor of composition then began again, 
and lasted, with the same ardor, till noon, when he 
breakfasted on two boiled eggs and bread, drinking 
nothing but water, and ending this frugal meal with a 
cup of excellent coffee, still without sugar. From one to 
six at work again, always work. Then he dined veiy 
lightly, drinking one small glass of Vouvray, which he 
liked much, declaring it had the power to raise his 
spirits. From seven to eight he received me again, 
and sometimes his neighbors, Jules Sandeau and Emile 
Regnault. This life lasted six weeks, or two months, 
or more. His seclusion over, he seemed possessed of 
a feverish activhVy, and to make himself another man, 
as it were. He plunged into society, where he gathered 
fresh colors on his palette, and pillaged his honey like 
a bee. . . . 

" His servants loved him. Rose, the cook, a true 
cordon bleu (we called her La Grande Nanon), used 
to go into despair when her master, in his working 
months, neglected her dainty dishes. I have seen her 
come into his room on tiptoe, bringing a delicious con- 
somme and trembling with eagerness to see him drink 
it. Balzac would catch sight of her, perhaps the 
fumes of the soup would reach his olfactories ; then he 
would toss back his mane of hair with an impatient 
jerk of his head, and exclaim in his roughest and most 
surly voice : ' Rose, go away ; I don't want any- 
thing ; let me alone ! ' ' But Mossieu will ruin his 
health if he goes on this way; Mossieu will fall — 
ill ! * ' No, no ! let me alone, I say,' in a thundering 



Honore de Balzac. 163 

voice, ' I don't want anything ; you worry me ; go 
away ! ' Then the good soul would turn to go slowly, 
very slowly, muttering : ' To take such pains to please 
Mossieu ! and such a soup — how good it smells ! Why 
should Mossieu keep me in his service if he does n't 
want what I do for him?' This was too much for 
Balzac. He called her back, drank the soup at a gulp, 
and said in his kindest voice, as she went off radiant 
to her kitchen, ' Now, Rose, don't let this happen 
again.' When his microscopic groom, a poor little 
orphan whom he called Grain-de-mil, died, Balzac 
took extreme care of him, and never failed to go and 
see him daily during his illness. Yes, God had given 
my great writer a heart of gold ; and those who really 
knew him adored him. He possessed the art of mak- 
ing others love him to such a degree that in his 
presence they forgot any real or fancied complaint 
against him, and only remembered the affection they 
bore him." 

Although Balzac parted company with journalism in 
1831, and was from that time aloof on his own road in 
literature, he never ceased to desire the growth of sound 
criticism, which he declared did not exist in France. 
" I believe," he said, " that if ever patient, thorough, 
enlightened criticism was needed it is now, when the 
multiplicity of works of all kinds, and the uprising of 
ambitions are producing general confusion and the same 
want of order in literature which is observable in the 
art of painting. In that art matters have reached such 
a pass that there are neither masters nor schools ; the 
absence of discipline is injuring the sacred cause of art, 
and is becoming a hindrance to its faculties — to a sense 



164 Honore de Balzac. 

of the beautiful even, on which production rests. Where 
is the critic in the present day who understands the re- 
sources of criticism, and employs them with the laud- 
able purpose of explaining and bringing into use true 
methods of literary art, having read and studied the 
works he criticises? To read a work and understand it 
for one's self before rendering an account of it to the pub- 
lic ; to search for its defects in the interests of literature, 
and not for the sad amusement of grieving an author, is 
a task which takes time, — weeks, not days." 

With ideas like these in his mind he bought up, in 
1835, a weekly journal, then moribund, called the 
" Chronique de Paris." He summoned to his staff the 
best young talent of the da} r , and issued the paper 
semi-weekly, on Sunda} r s and Thursda}'s. As editor- 
in-chief he took charge of the department of foreign 
politics, and distributed the other offices as follows : 
Jules Sandeau, drama ; Emile Regnault, light litera- 
ture ; Gustave Planche and Jacques de Chaudes-Aigues, 
social criticism ; Alphonse Karr, satire ; Theophile 
Gautier, Charles de Bernard, and Raymond Brucker, 
novels and poems. Balzac's own contribution to the 
work was a series of papers on the current state of 
Europe, entitled La France et V Stranger. These 
forty-one articles are extremely interesting as showing 
the study that he gave to subjects which were, one 
might think, outside of his line of thought. Those who 
can remember the discussion of foreign politics in those 
days, especially that on the " Eastern question," will 
be interested in them. They relate chiefly to the 
general condition of Europe ; but Americans will ob- 
serve that several intelligent references to the United 



Honore de Balzac. 165 

States occur in the course of them. However, whether 
it was that Balzac aimed too high to amuse the pub- 
lic, or that, as Werdet suggests, he could not make 
his young staff work, the " Chronique de Paris" 
proved a failure, and lived but a few months. Five 
years later he again renewed the attempt ; but this 
time he did the work alone. In 1840 he began the 
kk Revue Parisienne," a monthly periodical written 
wholly by himself; which lived three months, and died 
for want of subscribers. Some of the articles in these 
numbers have been greatly praised by French critics, 
especially those on Fenimore Cooper and on Stendhal ; 
but for the most part the} 7 belonged to their da}', and 
have passed away with it. Among them is the well- 
known criticism on Sainte-Beuve's " Histoire de Port 
Royal," which, however just it may be from a literaiy 
and historical point of view, does not fulfil Balzac's 
own desire to avoid the "sad amusement of grieving 
an author." It is true that Sainte-Beuve had assailed 
Balzac six years earlier, when reviewing La Recherche 
de VAbsolu, by touching on personal matters which 
had nothing to do with literature, and were peculiarly 
wounding to him, — namely, his relation through his 
books to women, combined with an imaginary sketch 
of his early life. The two men were antagonistic by 
nature ; and it is to the honor of Sainte-Beuve's cold 
and rather sour spirit that he did, after Balzac's death, 
impelled by his true literary sense, write a review of 
him Which was fully as just and perceptive as his na- 
ture could allow him to make it ; and it must not be 
forgotten that with all his limitations he saw and said 
what is, in fact, the deepest truth about Balzac, — 



166 Honor e de Balzac. 

namely, that posterit}' alone could judge him. 1 Champ- 
fleury says somewhat the same thing in his modest but 
valuable essay. "There are two ways of criticising 
M. de Balzac," he says. " The simplest is to read 
his works, to understand them, and then sit down and 
write an article on the Comedie Humaine. The sec- 
ond method, wellnigh impossible for our present lit- 
erature, is to shut one's self up for six months, and 
carefully study in their every detail, as we study a 
difficult language, not only the Comedie Humaine, but 
all M. de Balzac's works. This cannot be done quickly. 
Perhaps in twenty years, fifty years, after ten patient 
students have gathered together the chief materials, 
some man of great intellect will profit by their labor, 
and will combine them all in one great commentaiy." 

It was Balzac's ambition, as it has ever been that of 
great minds representing human nature, to do dramatic 
work. He regarded the stage as a great, if not the 
greatest teacher of men ; the most powerful and wide- 
reaching of moral influences. He placed it far above 
the work of the novelist. It was natural therefore that 
his ambition should constantly keep before his mind 
the hope of becoming a dramatic author. We have 
already seen how practice and the throwing-off of im- 
mature and comparatively worthless books were needed 
before he gathered together his powers as a novelist. It 
is possible that if his life had been prolonged he might, 
in the perfect peace of a prosperous married life, have 
given himself wholly to dramatic art, and with his un- 
flinching conscientiousness have trained his powers into 

1 Portraits conteraporains, par C. A. Sainte-Beuve, vol. ii. 
Calmann Levy, Paris, 1889. 



Honore de Balzac. 167 

doing work that would have lived forever. As it is, the 
five dramas produced upon the stage (there are more 
than a score of others, finished and unfinished, still 
in manuscript) are far from equal to his other work. 
They are worth studying, however, for it will be seen 
that their chief defects come from his habits as a nov- 
elist, which time and practice might have corrected. 
For instance, the stage requires a clear and easily dis- 
tinguished plot ; in Balzac's novels the plot is often, it 
might be said, absent. He depicts life, and life has 
no such artificial arrangement ; but for the stage it is 
necessary to bring the portion of life depicted sharply 
into focus, and this Balzac had not trained himself to 
do. Also, the management of his scenes is clums} r , 
the dialogue heavy, with the philosophical and didac- 
tical tendency which those who truly care for his books 
agree to welcome there. Yet, in spite of these defects 
of form for stage composition, he had, in an eminent 
degree, the dramatic instinct. 

The last pla}* that he wrote, Le Faiseur (The Specu- 
lator), ought to be rewritten for the stage of the present 
day, for it is marvellous as a prophecy of the pass to 
which money would bring the world ; it is, in fact, a 
truer picture of our times than of the times in which it 
was written. George Henry Lewes made an inadequate 
version of it which was played for a time in London. 

In addition to his higher dramatic ambitions he had 
that of earning a better wage for his labor ; this he 
shares in common with all novelists, who in these days, 
as in his, find that purely literary work is not remun- 
erated for the toil it costs, and that the stage alone 
repays their labor. At the time when he produced his 



168 Honore de Balzac. 

first play, Vautrin, he was under an unusual pressure 
of ill-luck. The walls of Les Jardies had crumbled 
down, his brother Henry was in trouble, which threw 
certain obligations upon him, and a first dramatic ven- 
ture, which he does not name, but which had cost him 
much labor, and was sold for a premium of six thousand 
francs, exclusive of rc^alties, had been returned to him, 
owing to lack of money on the part of the theatre to 
bring it out. No critical judgment was ever rendered 
upon Vautrin, which was acted for the first and only 
time at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1840, because 
Frederick Lemaitre, who played Vautrin in the dress 
of a Mexican general, happened to wear a toupee, 
which was thought to mimic and deride Louis Philippe, 
who was noted for that pyramidal covering to his bald- 
ness, which gave a sort of stalk to his pear-shaped 
head. The play was forbidden by the government the 
next day, with an offer of indemnfty to Balzac, which 
he refused, asking, however, for compensation to the 
theatre and the actors. " I refused," he sa}'s in a letter 
to Madame Visconti. " I said that I had either a right 
to it or no right to it. If I had a right, m} T obligations 
to others must be considered. I said I asked nothing ; 
that I valued such virginity of spirit ; that my wishes 
were, nothing for myself, or all for the others." 

His second play, Les Ressources de Quinola, was 
performed at the Odeon, March 15th, 1842, and failed. 
Balzac, who had set high hopes upon this piece and 
continued to think it worthy of a better fate, mentions 
in his preface to the printed version that only four per- 
sons had defended it, namely : Victor Hugo, Lamartine, 
Madame de Girarclin, and Leon Gozlan. The blow 



Honore de Balzac. 169 

was a crushing one, and it wrung from him a grieved 
and disheartened cry in a letter to his mother, dated 
April, 1842 : — 

" The life I live," he writes, " is not fit to share with 
others. I tire out both friends and relatives ; they one 
and all avoid my sad home, and things will now be 
more difficult, if not impossible, than ever ; the loss 
of money from my play only complicates the situa- 
tion. ... I don't know what to do ; but I must de- 
cide on some course within the next few daj^s. When 
my furniture is sold, and Les Jardies too, there will not 
be much left ; I shall be once more alone with my pen 
and a garret. I shall live from hand to mouth on arti- 
cles I can no longer write as I once did with the celerity 
of youth. You think — my nearest all think — that the 
egotism of my toil is personal selfishness. I do not 
deceive myself: if up to this time, working as I have 
worked, I have not succeeded in getting clear of debt and 
making a living, future work will not save me. I must 
do something else. I must seek some other position." 

It was at this time that he wrote Albert Savarus, 
one of the most remarkable of his books, and little 
read, — the story of a man's love through passionate 
effort and a great defeat. 1 

1 It has been said that Albert Savarus was inspired by his rela- 
tions with Madame Hanska. But this cannot be so. It is unmis- 
takably the picture of man's first love for woman in his youth. 
At the time Albert Savarus was written (a year before Monsieur 
Hanski's death) Balzac's relation to Madame Hanska was that 
of friendship only. It had, no doubt, the germs of love, but they 
were not developed until later. At this time it certainly was not 
in his thoughts as the inspiration of Albert Savarus. His love for 
Madame Hanska was that of his mature life, not of his youth ; 



170 Honore de Balzac. 

Of his succeeding plays, JPamela Giraud was brought 
out at the Gaiete in September, 1843, when Balzac 
was paying his first visit to Madame Hanska at St. 
Petersburg, after the death of her husband. He seems 
to have taken little interest in it. La Mardtre was 
produced at the Theatre Historique, June, 1848. Le 
Faiseur was not played at all during his lifetime, but 
after his death it was reduced to three acts and brought 
out successfully, August, 1851, at the Gyranase, under 
the title of Mercadet, and at the Theatre Frangais, Octo- 
ber, 1868, with M. Got in the leading part. 

Theophile Gautier dwells at length on what he calls 
the absolute modernhVy of Balzac's genius. " Balzac 
owes nothing," he says, " to antiquity. For him there 
are neither Greeks nor Romans, nor any trace in the 
composition of his talent of Homer, or Virgil, or Horace, 
not even of the Viris illastribus ; no one was ever less 
classic." It is quite true, obviously true, that Balzac's 
genius was brought to bear solely on the present. Its 
work lay there, — a work so teeming that there was (to 
give the simplest of reasons) no room for extraneous 
thoughts and images. If at times it rose above the 
plane of its immediate work it was to other regions than 
those of classic antiquity. But none the less is Balzac's 
genius allied to antiquity so far as that is the repre- 
sentative of the eternal verities. Look, for instance, 

although it was a repetition of that early love. The book was 
written under the bitter sense that his life was once more a failure, 
his vocation insufficient for his needs, and that his literary ambi- 
tion, which had hitherto been the mainstay of his life, had lost its 
vitality. At such a moment of fresh disappointment and despair 
his mind reverted to the sorrows of his youth. 



Honore de Balzac. 171 

at the awfulness of Fate as it stalks through his pages, 
relentlessly pursuing men like Philippe Bridau and 
Baron Hulot to their doom ; the spirit of Greek tragedy 
is there. Or, turn to his picturing of Sorrow. He 
himself points to the source from which he learned 
it as he walked in Pere-Lachaise in search of sor- 
rows. " Of all the affections of the soul," he says, 
tw sorrow is the hardest to depict ; in that we moderns 
are the very humble servants of the ancients." If we 
turn to the patient mother's sorrow in Agathe Bridau, 
the repentant mother's sorrow in Lad}' Brandon, the 
noble grief of Cesar Birottean, the anguish of Colonel 
Chabert, the blighted life of Albert Savarus, or Dante's 
despairing vision on the Seine, we see an instinct in 
Balzac's genius which was certainly not modern, for 
such sorrows, though they belong to all time, are not 
characteristic of our day as they were of antiquit}'. 

Gail tier goes farther, and says that this modernity 
affected Balzac's sense of art. " He read with careless 
e} T es the marble strophes in which Greek art has sung 
the glor} r of the human form. He could look at the 
Venus of Milo without ecstasy ; but if a Parisian 
woman draped in her shawl, with all her many graces, 
stopped before that immortal statue, his eyes lighted up 
with pleasure. Ideal beauty, with its serene, pure lines, 
was too simple, too cold, too uniform, for his compli- 
cated, teeming, and diversified genius." This is surely 
too narrow a conclusion. It is true that Balzac had 
no sympathy with romantic ideals, whether ancient 
or modern ; and it may also be said that his deepest , 
appreciation of art was as the work of men's hands, — / 
here its appeal to his mind was probably through the ' 



172 Honore de Balzac. 

fellow-feeling of his own struggle in manipulating his 
art. " The artist," he says, " is a creator ; the man who 
disposes of thought is a sovereign. Kings have com- 
manded nations for a limited time ; artists command the 
ages ; shall we forget that art from the dawn of fresco 
and of sculpture is a Power to the present day?" But 
many proofs could be adduced from his writings of his 
reverence for the abilitj- of art to render " serene, pure" 
truth. "Who but Raffaelle," he exclaims, " can paint a 
virgin ? for literature in this respect falls below art." 

His sense of certain arts, as art, may have been defec- 
tive ; his judgment, perhaps his enjoyment, of poetry 
certainly was ; the trammels of that art affected him. 
But he was himself a poet, and a great poet. There 
is no evidence, either way, as to his knowledge of the 
classics (except that as a lad of sixteen he studied them 
ardently), but the man who described the heroic deeds • 
of his own time in heroic words, as in his pictures of 
Napoleon, must have loved Homer ; and he who saw 
the vision of the Shade, "standing upon the outer 
verge of that dark circle of the abyss of woe, his feet 
straining, with cruel tension, to spring upward " to the 
Woman-Soul from which he was forever parted, knew 
Dante as few in our day know him. And what shall 
we say of the Assumption in Seraphitaf In a future 
age, when the subject is better understood, that will be 
counted as the work of one of the greatest poets of the 
nineteenth century ; at present it is neither ancient nor 
modern art, but a vision of futurity. 

There is, however, much to corroborate Gautier's 
opinion (which is just, so far as it goes, but misses the 
higher ground which Balzac reached) in the fact that 



Honore de Balzac. 173 

the art in which he found most personal enjoyment, 
namely, music, is a modern art ; also in the further 
fact that his collection of rare things, so lovingly cata- 
logued in Cousin Pons, comprised chiefly the treasures 
of man's choicest handiwork, especially such as had 
historic interest attaching to them ; but above all, in 
the signal instance that one form of his own work, 
his style, is essentially modern. . 

It is not possible for foreigners to judge of the style 
of a French writer from the French point of view, nor 
should the}' attempt to do so. The necessary under- 
standing is bred in the bone, and no acquired com- 
prehension can take its place. There are, of course, 
some points which a foreigner can perceive, and sev- 
eral on which the close intercourse that comes of trans- 
lation justifies an opinion ; but it must always be borne 
in mind that the opinion is English, not French, and 
due allowance must be made for this. Balzac's style 
is the voice of his genius ; what his genius was, that 
his style is, — like master, like man. When he wres- 
tled in solitude to form his thought, he took the words 
that best formulated it. Language was not to him an 
art in itself, it was the sluice of his ideas. As the 
torrent of his thought, such as we see it in his books, 
came rushing on, with its hundred currents and aspects, 
philosophical, metaphorical, descriptive, it seized words, 
or made them, or modelled phrases, as its expression 
needed. This was certainly not classical, and many of 
the French writers who in Balzac's day were still under 
the traditions of the seventeenth century were shocked ; 
though he was not as much of a neologist as the} 7 said 
he was, for the studies he had made of the French 



174 Honore de Balzac, 

language from the time of Rabelais for the Contes 
Drolatiques enabled him to replace many words which 
the purists of the seventeenth century had discarded. 
But however impetuous the torrent of Balzac's writing, 
the current is always clear ; it is not limpid, like the 
soft flowing of George Sand's language, but in what- 
ever channel, or stream, or brook it runs, the words 
that best express the thing to be expressed are there. 
There are times, in fact, when Balzac's style is match- 
less in its presentation of the feeling of the scene he 
is describing. Take, for instance, the rendering of the 
"majesty of Cold," the flight of the eider duck, the 
breaking of the ice-bonds, in Seraphita. It ma}* almost 
be said that words of description could no farther go 
in conveying not only a scene, but the sensation of it. 
Could poetry as an art do more ? 

It has been said that Balzac is a difficult writer to 
translate. He does not seem so, for the reason that 
he is so clear. There are times when it is easy to see 
that he has worked too long over his thought, and has 
corrected his original words too often. Patience is then 
needed to construct a passage after him ; indeed, it some- 
times seems as though the clauses of a paragraph were 
like the bits of a Chinese puzzle, to be turned this way 
and that before they can be fitted into place ; but this 
is rare, and happens only when his mind flags a little, 
or his relentless conscience will not let him give up the 
expression of minute particulars. For the most part, 
and particularly when an ardent emotion or conviction 
carries him through equally long sentences with many 
clauses, the current of his thought runs clear, like 
rapids with the sunlight in them. It is noticeable to 



Honore de Balzac. 175 

a translator that no freedom is allowed by Balzac ; the 
actual translated word or its closest equivalent must 
be used, or something of the meaning is lost. This is 
not so with other French writers, — George Sand, for 
instance ; it often happens that one fairly synonymous 
word seems to do as well as another in rendering her 
meaning. Balzac, on the contrary, keeps a translator 
under his thumb. Sometimes, in the course of his long 
and fiery sentences some trifling word has been over- 
looked, and when the end is reached the meaning comes 
out crookedty ; it is like dropping a stitch in a woman's 
knitting ; it cannot be patched in ; the work must be un- 
ravelled, the stitch picked up, and the whole reknitted. 
In much of the French literature of the present day a 
translator, and probably all foreigners who read French, 
are hampered by the self-consciousness of the writers, 
which seriously affects their style. The reader, or trans- 
lator, has to consider not only the subject of a book and 
its presentation, but the personality of the writer, — an 
under-current of confidential communication must be 
kept up with a third element. This appears to a for- 
eigner to vitiate a style. Balzac is free from this defect. 
His writings are absolutely impersonal. His thought 
speaks to you, never himself. He is not so unwise as 
to complicate that which he wishes to put into you by 
letting you see the hand that does it; though this in 
him is not so much a conscious self-restraint as the ne- 
cessity of his genius, which saw his thought as a thing 
apart from himself. 

Theophile Gautier, who had a delightfully rich and 
vivid style of his own, says: " The French language, 
refined away by the academicians of the seventeenth cen- 



176 .Honor 4 de Balzac. 

tury, is, when conformed to, only suitable for the expres- 
sion of general ideas and the rendering of conventional 
forms in a vague way. In order to represent the mul- 
tiplied of his details, types, characters, architectures, 
household surroundings, etc., Balzac was forced to 
make for himself a special language composed of the 
technological terms of the arts and sciences, the studios, 
the street, the theatre itself. An}' and every word which 
had a distinct thing to sa} T was welcomed b} r him, and 
he would slash an incision into his sentences or com- 
placently add parentheses to admit them. It was this 
that made superficial critics say that Balzac did not 
know how to write. He had, though he himself did not 
think so, a style, and a very fine stj'le, — the logical 
and mathematical style of his idea." "As for style," 
said Sainte-Beuve, himself a purist, " he has it; deli- 
cate, subtle, liquid, picturesque, having no analogy 
whatever with tradition." 

M. Marcel Barriere (his most important French 
critic of the present daj T ) sa}~s, however: " We affirm 
that Balzac cared as little for elegance of stj'le as he 
did for the plastic beauty of art ; he did not possess 
the musical instinct in language so dear to the delicate 
literary mind. He was uot sufficiently endowed with 
the sentiment of harmony inculcated by our ancestors, 
which made the triumph of Eousseau, Bernardin de 
Saint-Pierre, and Chateaubriand." To an English mind 
the answer would seem to be that those writers were 
of colder natures, who could not see as Balzac saw ; 
their stjie could never have represented his thought. 1 

1 L'CEuvre de H. de Balzac, etude litte'raire et philo-sophique ; 
par Marcel Barriere, 1 vol., Calmann Levy, Paris, 1890. M. Bar- 



Honore de Balzac. 177 

Balzac has been called the father of realism. Would 
that he were ! He certainly is not the father of the 
present school of realists. That — whether in its most 
commonplace and puritanical exponents, or in Zola, or 
in the half-crazed brain of Tolstoi (whose original 
aspirations are so high above those of his admirers that 
he ought not to be classed with them ; his being a great 
perception gone mad) — is the child of materialism. The 
question of realism, what it is and what it should be, 
will always be discussed from the point of view of each 
man's own temperament and perceptions. What a man 
sees, that he thinks real. Some can admit that others 
may see another real from theirs ; others wish to im- 
pose their real on all minds, and seem unable to per- 
ceive that those who have higher perceptions of human 
nature can never be brought to accept views which, in 
their judgment, degrade it. Tell such writers that the 
true Real is the Ideal and the}' will smile at your non- 
sense ; and yet the whole of morality, — moralit}' of art, 
moralh*y of life — is there. A great service would be 
done to morality if the realists of our fin-de-siecle had 

riere has written an excellent critique of Balzac's books on cer- 
tain lines, limited in some respects. His summings-up are less 
useful, being more conventional ; but the book is a valuable con- 
tribution to Balzac literature. As we have said before, Balzac 
will live for the judgment of posterity. The present school of 
writers can judge him even less than the men of his own day; 
but all current criticism is valuable as memoires pour servir of the 
periods through which Balzac's work passes before it comes to 
full comprehension. The short memoir by Mr. Frederick Wed- 
more in the " Great Writers " series stands alone in English liter- 
ature (so far as the present writer is aware) for a just conception, 
although too limited, of Balzac as a man. It should be welcomed 
by all who study him. 

12 



178 Honor e de Balzac. 

the courage of their opinions and would say frankly : 
" Let us eat, and drink, and make money ; the world is 
a muck-heap, but let us get what we can from it, and 
crow while we may, for to-morrow we die, and that's 
the end of it." Most of them will not say this, for, in 
truth, they do not think it ; they are merely playing 
with their theory, — which is only a passing phase after 
all. But it is, none the less, immoral and degrading. 

Balzac's realism is very different. In the dawn of his 
genius true realism was revealed to him. " To think 
is to see," he said. " Possiblv," he added, fc ' materialism 
and spiritualism express two sides of the same thing." 
Here we have the key-note to which he tuned himself; 
and he had an inward consciousness which sustained 
his thought. A discussion of Balzac's realism would be 
out of place here ; the Comedie Hvmaine is the em- 
bodiment of it. There he ran the gamut of his con- 
ception of realism, — shrinking, as he says, from none 
of the consequences of his principles. And herein lies 
his morality. For Balzac is a moralist, — the greatest 
moralist of the nineteenth century ; one who does not 
preach, but shows the truth. To discuss this matter 
fully would prolong it beyond the limits of this memoir ; 
but we may dwell for a moment on one point of it. In 
his earliest youth, almost in his childhood, he had longed 
to meet a woman-angel, and the desire kept his spirit 
pure. When he entered life and saw the condition of 
womanhood, the pass to which woman had been brought 
and had brought herself, he set about — under a true 
inspiration, and with his natural instinct to take the 
part of the sorrowful and helpless, no matter what their 
vices were — to better her condition. How has he done 



Honor e de Balzac. 179 

it ? By presenting facts in their most awful reality ; 
not sparing woman with any false tenderness or fear of 
outcry (no shrinking from the consequences here ! ). but 
warning her by his realism, teaching her by the eye to 
see the horror and the distortion of her position. He 
himself gives this as his deliberate purpose ; it is, he 
sa3 T s, b} T showing facts that he must bring men's minds 
to the emancipation of women and their higher educa- 
tion ; and when he said this he had in view something 
far more fundamental than our present surface questions 
of woman's emancipation. If realism has the virtue 
that its followers attribute to it (and it has), this is what 
its virtue should accomplish ; this is what Balzac sought 
to do for woman, leading her step by step from her 
lowest degradation in Cousine Bette up through Eugenie 
Grandet, Eve Sechard, Marguerite Claes, and others 
like them, to Seraphita, where the destiny of woman 
is presented as a series of lives ascending from love of 
self, love of others, love of heaven, till the end be 
won, — a book which M. Taine calls upon us to ob- 
serve is the " consummation of Balzac's work, as the 
flower is that of its plant ; a book in which the genius 
of the writer attains its complete expression, foreseen, 
explained, justified, and led up to by all his other 
work." 

Yes, Siraphita was, indeed, the crown of his work ; 
but he was destined to leave the world with much of 
that work unaccomplished. All was mapped out ; and 
it stirs the feelings painfully to look along the vista of 
his plans and see what the world has lost. Among 
these projected works (a list of which will be found in 
the appendix) his thoughts particularly clung to the 



180 Honor e de Balzac. 

hope of writing Le Pretre catholique, the Pathologie 
de la vie sociale, the Anatomie des Co?*ps Miseignants, 
and the Monographie de la verta. '- Looking at the 
work still to be done," he saj's, in his preface to the 
Comedie Humaine, "perhaps nry readers will say, 
i Ma} T your life be prolonged ! ' M} T own prayer is that 
I ma}* not be so much tortured b} T men and events as I 
have been in the past, since the beginning of my great 
and terrible labor. Yet I have had one support, for 
which I return thanks to God. The highest talent of 
our day, the noblest characters, the truest friends, have 
clasped my hand, and said to me, - Take courage ! ' 
Wlrv should I not own that such proofs of affection, such 
testimonials given now and then by strangers, have 
upheld me in my career in spite of myself, in spite of 
unjust attacks, in spite of calumnies that have pursued 
me, — upheld me against dishearten ment, and also 
against that too vivid hope, the expression of which has 
sometimes been mistaken for excessive self-love ? " 

Anecdotes that reveal the fancies and habits of a 
great mind and show it in action are precious, if they 
bear the stamp of truth ; in Balzac's case they are 
invaluable, because so unguardedly natural. Here is 
one in the language of M. Leon Gozlan, somewhat 
abridged : — 

" One evening I received a note from Balzac, dated 
Les Jardies, asking me to meet him the next day at 
three o'clock, in the Champs Elysees, between the 
Horses of Marly and the Cafe des Ambassadeurs. I 
must be punctual, he said, as the matter was impor- 
tant. The day was dull and chilly, the ground damp, 
a cold wind blowing. ' Let us walk fast,' said Balzac, 



Honore de Balzac.- 181 

when we met, ' to keep up the circulation. I have just 
written a little tale for the first number of the ' ' Revue 
Parisienne.' , I am rather pleased with it, that is, I 
shall be when I have found — that which you must 
help me to find to-da}'. But I must describe to you 
the principal personage, — in fact, the only personage 
in this little poem of morals, the grievous morals of our 
social epoch, such as tbe national politics of the last ten 
years have made them.' He thereupon described the 
personage he had created. 4 Now,' he said, ' you '11 see 
what I want of you. For such a man, so extraordinary 
a man, I must have a name in keeping with his des- 
tiny ; a name which explains and pictures and proclaims 
him ; a name that shall be his, that could not possibly 
be the cognomen of any other. Well, it won't come to 
me ; I have tried every possible vocal combination with- 
out success. I will not baptize my type with a stupid 
name. We must find one that shall fit the man as the 
gum the tooth, the root the hair, the nail the flesh. 
Don't you understand? ' 

" 'No.' 

" 'No? don't you admit that there are names that 
remind you of a diadem, a sword, a helmet, a flower?' 

" k No.' 

" ' Names that veil and reveal a poet, a satiric wit, a 
profound philosopher, a famous painter?' 

' 4 ' No, no.' 

44 c I know better,' said Balzac, much provoked. 
' Names are given on high before they are given in this 
low world. It is a mystery, to which it is not allowable 
to apply the petty rules of our trivial reasoning. I am 
not the onlv one who believes in this miraculous con- 



182 Honor e de Balzac. 

junction of man with his name, which he bears as a 
divine or devilish talisman, to light his way on earth, 
or burn him up. Great minds have always shared this 
belief; and strange to say, the masses do, too.' 

" ' Wiry don't you make a name? ' 

" ' I tell } T ou I can't. I am worn out with work. I 
have tried, but it won I come. We must discover it?' 

" ' If it exists.' 

" 'It does exist,' said Balzac, solemnly, ' and you 
must suggest a way to find it. That is what I want 
you for.' 

" After reflecting a few moments I said, ' Let us read 
the signs in the streets ; there }'ou '11 find all kinds of 
names, pompous, ridiculous, queer, paradoxical ; enough 
to rejoice the heart of a vaudevillist ; virtuous names, 
wicked names, brigands' names ; these last are usually 
those of chandlers and confectioners.' 

"The idea delighted Balzac. Alas, I had not fore- 
seen to what it would lead. 

" 'Where shall we begin?' he said. 

" ' Why, here,' I answered. 

" We were just then leaving the court of the Louvre, 
and entering the rue Coq-Saint-Honore. It was not to 
be expected that our first steps would produce am~- 
thing. Names were plentiful, but they had no physiog- 
nomies. He looked one side of the street, I the other, 
our noses in the air, and our feet heaven knows where, 
which produced much jostling with pedestrians, who 
probably took us for blind men. Down the rue du 
Coq, through the rue Saint-Honore to the Palais-Roj'al, 
and all the collateral streets to the rue Vivienne, the 
place de la Bourse, the rue Neuve Vivienne, the bou- 



Honore de Balzac. 188 

levard Montraartre. At the corner of the rue Mont- 
martre I broke down ; alarmed that Balzac refused 
to accept any of the names I pointed out to him, I 
declined to go a step further. 

44 ' It is alwa} 7 s the wa} r with everything/ said Balzac. 
4 Christopher Columbus abandoned by his crews ! I 
shall land on the soil of America alone. You may go.' 

44 ' 4 You are in the midst of many Americas,' I re- 
torted, 4 and you won't land ; you are very unrea- 
sonable ; you have rejected splendid names. It is 
Christopher Columbus himself who is to blame.' 

44 4 Fatigue makes a man more unjust than anger ; I 
know that myself,' said Balzac. 4 Here, take my arm, 
and go as far as Saint-Eustache.' 

44 4 But no farther? ' 

44 4 So be it.' 

44 But he contrived before we reached Saint-Eustache 
to drag me through the length and breadth of the rues 
du Mail, de Clery, du Cadran, des Fosses-Montmartre, 
and the place de la Victoire, filled with magnificent 
Alsacian names ; in the midst of which I declared to 
him that if he did not make an immediate choice I 
would leave him on the spot. 

44 4 There is only the rue du Bouloi left,' said Balzac ; 
4 don't refuse me the rue du Bouloi, and then we '11 go 
back to Les Jardies for dinner.' 

44 1 granted him the rue du Bouloi, and it was at the 
farther end of that street that Balzac, — never shall I 
forget it ! — having glanced through a little gate, an 
oblong, narrow, mean little gate opening into a damp 
allej 7 , suddenly changed color, quivered all over, uttered 
a cr v y, and said to me : — 



184 Honor e de Balzac. 

" ' There ! there ! there ! read it.' 

" And I read — Marc as. 

" ' Marcas,' he muttered. ' Marcas ; what a name ! 
Marcas, — the name of names; Marcas! we will look 
no farther.' 

" ' So be it,' I said ; ' I ask no better.' 

" ' Marcas ; my hero is Marcas,' he went on ; 'phil- 
osopher, writer, statesman, poet ignored ; it is all there. 
Marcas ! I shall call him Z. Marcas, to add a flame, a 
plume, a star to the name. Z. Marcas must be some 
great and unknown artist, engraver, carver, or silver- 
smith, like Benvenuto Cellini.' 

U 'I can soon find out,' I said. 

" Leaving Balzac in adoration before the house, I in- 
quired of the concierge. Returning towards the street, 
I shouted from afar : — 

" 'Tailor!' 

"'Tailor!' Balzac was silent for a moment; his 
head drooped. Then he looked up proudly. 

" ' He deserved a better fate,' he said ; ' but no mat- 
ter ; I will immortalize him.' " 

Those who have read Le Lys dans la Vallee cannot 
fail to remember the exquisite story of the wild-flowers, 
and perhaps if they studied it deeplj' they may have 
been puzzled to identify a certain herb, the description 
and the name of which do not agree. Here is the ex- 
planation. The anecdote is told b} T Leon Gozlan. 

"Yes," said Balzac, lajing down three or four vol- 
umes that he carried under his arm, " that is Fenimore 
Cooper's last work. It is fine, it is grand, it is in- 
tensely interesting. I know no one but Walter Scott 



Honore de Balzac. 185 

who has ever risen to that grandeur and serenity of 
coloring. . . . When I conceived the idea of Le Lys 
dans la Vallee I had, like Cooper, the idea of giving 
scenerj" a splendid part in the work. Full of this idea, 
I plunged into natural pantheism like a pagan. I made 
myself tree, horizon, stream, star, brooklet, light. And 
as science is a good helper in everything, I wanted to 
know the names and properties of certain plants which 
I meant to bring into my descriptions. M/y first desire 
was to learn the names of all those little herbs we 
tread upon in country places, along the roadsides, in 
the meadows, everywhere. I began by asking my own 
gardener. ' Oh, Monsieur,' he said, ' nothing easier to 
know than that.' ' What is it, then, since it is so easy ? ' 
1 Well, some is luzern ; this is clover ; that is sainfoin.' 
' No, no, that is n't what I mean. I want to know 
what you call all these little herbs under my feet ; here, 
I'll gather a tuft of them.' ' Oh, that, monsieur, that's 
grass.' 'Yes, but the name of each herb, long, short, 
straight, curved, smooth, prickty, rough, velvet}', dry, 
damp, dark-green, pale-green.' ' Well, they are all 
called grass.' I could n't get anything out of him but 
' Grass.' The next day a friend came to see me ; he 
happened to be a great traveller, and I said to him : 
1 You, who are such a botanist and have been all over 
the world, do you know the names of the little herbs we 
have under our feet ? ' i Bless me!' he said, ; what 
herbs?' ' These,' I said, and I plucked some and put 
them into his hand. ' The fact is,' he said, after a few 
moments' examination, ' I don't really know an}' flora 
but that of Malabar. If we were in India now I could 
tell you the names of countless little plants, but here — , 



186 Honor e de Balzac. 

' Here you are just as ignorant as I am?' ' I admit it,' 
he said. The next day I went to the Jardin des Plantes 
and questioned one of the most learned professors in 
the institution. ' Oh, Monsieur de Balzac/ he said, 
' What a thing to ask me ! Here we are busy with the 
larch and tamarisk, and other such families ; but life is 
too short to come down to those little herbs that are 
nothing at all. Tl^ concern your salad-woman. But 
joking apart,' he added, ' where are you going to put 
your novel?' 'In Touraine.' 'Very good; then the- 
first peasant you meet in Touraine can tell you more 
than the most learned of us here.' Down I went to 
Touraine, and there I found the peasants just as igno- 
rant as the rest ; so that when I wrote Le Lys dans 
la Vallee I found it impossible to describe with perfect 
accuracy that carpet of verdure which it would have 
given me such happiness to picture blade b} T blade." 

M. Taine says of the description in Le Lys dans la 
Vallee to which the above anecdote refers : "Oriental 
poetiy has nothing more dazzling, more magnificent ; 
it is intoxicating, luxurious ; we float in a sky of light 
and perfume ; all the sensuous jo}*s of a summer's day 
enter both soul and body, quivering, murmuring, like a 
tumultuous bev} T of many-colored butterflies." * 

1 Nouveaux Essais de critique et d'histoire, par H. Taine. 1 vol. 
3eme g^ Hachette et cie., Paris, 1880. The essay on Balzac should 
be read. It contains a splendid flux of words in which, truth to 
tell, there is less of Balzac than we might expect ; but wherever a 
judgment is given, whether for or against him, it is worth reading, 
though colored by M. Taine's fancy, — as where he calls him " a 
business man in debt." Werdet, who ought to know, and who is 
corroborated by all we find of Balzac's life, says: "He was an 
honest man ; an honest man in debt, and not a ' business man in 
debt/ as M. H. Taine avers." 



Honor e de Balzac. 187 

During the twelve years which we are now consider- 
ing Balzac wrote and published seventy-nine novels 
and tales, — a stupendous work when we consider the 
wealth of ideas embodied and developed in them. The 
reader is referred to the appendix, where a list of each 
year's work will be found. So busy a life would seem 
to allow of no holiday, but his habit was to alternate 
long periods of intense application with shorter periods 
of relaxation, employed, naturally and perhaps uncon- 
sciously, in gathering the experience with which to pur- 
sue his work. He made, as we have seen, frequent visits 
to the provinces, and yearly trips to foreign countries. 
In September, 1833, he was at Neufchatel, where he 
first met Madame Hanska ; in 1834 he was at Geneva ; 
in 1835 at Vienna ; the famous journey to Sardinia was 
in 1838, and the following } T ear he was in Northern 
Italy, and again at Vienna. After that he travelled 
little for four years, but went much into society. His 
sister tells us that he loved life and enjoyed its pleas- 
ures ; he was veiy hospitable, and the cheeiy dinners 
given in his various homes still live in the narratives 
of his friends. 

He remained in the rue Cassini for eight years ; from 
there he moved to the rue des Batailles at Chaillot, 
where he had the enjoyment, Gautier tells us, of a 
magnificent view over Paris. His desire seems ever to 
have been for heights. In his studious }T>uth he sought 
that highest point in Pere-Lachaise (the spot where he 
now lies) whence he could see all Paris ; and his dream of 
future earthly rest, as he tells us himself, was always for 
a home on a mountain. True to this feeling, he bought, 
in 1838, three acres of land at Ville-d'A^vra}*, where he 



188 Honor e de Balzac. 

erected the famous pavilion already described in a letter 
to Madame Carraud. A past historic interest was con- 
nected with the place, which was called Les Jardies, 
where, according to Saint-Simon, the courtiers of Louis 
XIV. were lodged when the king was at Versailles. In 
after years it gained a third celebrity as the home where 
Gambetta lived and met his death. " Nothing can ex- 
ceed the beauty of my view," says Balzac, lovingly. 
" My house stands on the other side of the mountain, 
or perhaps I should say the hill of Saint-Cloud ; on the 
north it joins the royal park; to the west I see the 
whole valle}^ of Ville-d'Avra}^ ; to the east I soar above 
Sevres, and my eyes take in an immense horizon, with 
Paris in the far distance, its smoky atmosphere reach- 
ing as far as the slopes of Meudon and Belleville, beyond 
which I can see the plains of Montrouge and the high- 
road to Orleans, which leads to Tours. The whole is 
of strange magnificence and full of ravishing contrasts. 
The valley depths have the dewy freshness, the shade, 
the hillocks, the verdure of the Swiss valle} T s. Forests 
and woodland everywhere ; to the north the fine trees of 
the royal domain." 

Here he camped rather than lived, for he never had 
the means to furnish his little home. Nevertheless, it 
was the scene of much generous hospitality. It was 
entered from the road which passed behind it. The 
front-door and hall (if we are to believe the friend who 
thus describes it) were in the garret, " and you entered 
the house like wine being poured into a bottle." The 
steep declivity in front, where his fancy pictured trees, 
never grew anything taller in his time than shrubs, 
which, he remarks exultantry, were nearty tall enough 



Honore de Balzac. 189 

to hide- Tare, his Saint-Bernard dog. But his flowers 
were beautiful ; it gave him as much happiness to watch 
their growth as to hear of his successes in the world ; 
and, above all, he had the free air for which his spirit 
longed. There was, alas ! a reverse to the picture in 
the crumbling walls ; but this was not really as bad as 
his imagination made it. One would think from the 
doleful moan he sent to Madame Carraud that he was 
living in a sort of Herculaneum, with his household gods 
in fragments about him ; but, in truth, it was only the 
garden walls that toppled over, and, after rebuilding 
them several times to pacif} r an angry neighbor, who 
objected to heaps of stones upon his property, Balzac 
bought the adjoining ground, " in order," he said, " that 
the stones might at least rattle down on his own land." 

During part of the time when he lived at Les Jardies 
he kept a room in Paris, in the rue Richelieu, for con- 
venience ; but in 1843 he took an apartment at Passy 
(19 rue Basse) an outlying arrondissement of Paris, 
where he remained until he bought the small hotel 
Beaujon in the rue Fortunee (now the rue Balzac), 
which he fitted up luxuriously in the long delayed hope 
of his marriage with Madame Hanska, transporting 
there his hidden collection of works of art of all kinds. 

His expansive nature, expansive in spite of his 
strange secretiveness in deeper wa} T s, sought inter- 
course with men in his periods of release from work. 
Among these friends he counted the best men of his 
day. Frederic Souli£, Charles de Bernard, Charles 
Nodier, Victor Hugo, Heine, whom he often visited, 
Gavarni, Boulanger, Beyle, whose works he greatly ad- 
mired, Baron Barchou de Penhoen, a former comrade at 



190 Honore de Balzac. 

Vendome, Hector Berlioz, Liszt, Alfred de Musset, and 
the man who seems to have been closest to him in affec- 
tion, and also to have received the shadow of confidences 
not made to others, — Theophile Gautier. Many of 
these men were far more prosperous than he, the great- 
est of them, in their mutual career; but he seems to 
have been truly incapable, as George Sand said he was, 
of envy. Otherwise one might suppose that his feel- 
ings would have been hurt when he found the way 
barred against his entrance to the Academy, that Im- 
mortal body which was less mongrel in those days than 
it is now. But he behaved with dignity, and withdrew 
his name when failure seemed probable. " The matter 
does not stir my feelings very much," he said ; " some 
persons think not at all, but they are mistaken. If I 
do get there, so much the better ; if I do not, no mat- 
ter." It is characteristic of him to feel thus. He was 
totally without personal vanity or self-seeking. 'Self- 
assertive as to his work, absorbed in his ideas, con- 
vinced himself and eager to persuade others of their 
paramount value, he certainly was ; but his individual 
self was another thing ; and it is often affecting to no- 
tice how little thought or care he seemed to give to it. 
Leon Gozlan says of him : u Indifferent to personal 
fame, Balzac never gave a thought to what men might 
want to know of him apart from his books, — of his 
personal opinions, his private life and character, and 
his share in the daily events of the world." 

The following letter was addressed to those Acade- 
micians who intended to support his nomination. It is 
characteristic of Victor Hugo that he paid no attention 
to the request, and his ballot was cast for Balzac as a 
matter of principle. 



Honore de Balzac. 191 

" My dear Nodier, — I have learned to-daj', quite 
positively, that my situation as to fortune is one of the 
objections which will be brought up against me at the 
Academy, and I write, with deep grief, to ask you to 
give your influence elsewhere than in my favor. 

44 If I cannot enter the Academy on account of my 
honorable poverty, I will never present myself for ad- 
mission in the day when prosperity smiles upon me. I 
have written the same thing to Victor Hugo, who takes 
an interest in my election. 

" God grant you health, my kind Nodier." 

It is observable in Balzac's correspondence that he 
sa} r s little or nothing of his intercourse with society ; 
yet there cannot be a doubt in the minds of those who 
study his work that he saw much of the world, and was 
in close relations with many phases of social life, par- 
ticularly with women, who are the essence of it. It is 
impossible that he could have written of women under 
all aspects as he did unless he had a close personal 
knowledge of them. Before he became completely 
absorbed in Madame Hanska in 1843, there must have 
been a time when he saw much of man}' women, and 
may even have contemplated marriage with more than 
one of them. But the evidence of this period in his 
correspondence is slight, and his sister so distinctly 
says that he concealed all traces of it that a discussion 
of what it may have been is useless. It certainly did 
not influence him seriously as a man, though it was 
highly serviceable to his work. He remarks himself of 
this phase of his life that skin-deep affections did not 
suit him : Les amities cVepiderme ne me vont pas. 



192 Honore de Balzac. 



CHAPTER VII. 

JUDGMENT OF CONTEMPORARY FRIENDS. 

George Sand, with her good, broad mind, appreciated 
Balzac's nature, though she could not agree with his 
art (her own being so different), nor perceive the higher 
reaches of his spirit. No kinder or truer words, so far 
as the\- go, have been said of him than hers : l — 

" To say of a man of genius that he was essentially 
good and kind is the highest praise that I am able to 
bestow. All superiority must contend with so mari}^ 
obstacles and sufferings that the man who pursues his 
mission of genius with patience and gentleness is a 
great man, whatever meaning we may give to the term. 
Patience and gentleness are strength ; none was ever 
stronger than Balzac. 

" Before recalling his other claims to the attention of 
posterity I hasten to render him this justice, which has 
not been sufficiently rendered by his contemporaries. I 
saw him often under the shock of great, injustices, both 
literary and personal, and I never heard him say an 
evil word of any one. He went his painful wa}' with a 
smile in his soul. Full of himself, passionately eager 
about his art, he was, nevertheless, modest, after his 

1 Autour de la table, par George Sand, 1 vol., Michel Levy 
Freres, Nouvelle edition, Paris, 1875. 



Honore de Balzac. 193 

fashion, under an exterior of assumption which was only 
the naivete of an artist (great artists are great children), 
and in spite of an appearance of adoration for his per- 
sonal merits which was, in reality, nothing else than 
enthusiasm for his work. 

« Balzac's private life was very mysterious, and it has 
been, as I think, veiy ill understood by those who were 
initiated into it. What I know of it, from his own con- 
fidences, is of great originality and covers no black spots 
whatever.. But these revelations, which have nothing 
in them that reflects upon his memoiy, require amplifi- 
cations which would be out of place here and would not 
assist the purpose, chiefly literaiy, which I have set 
before me. It is sufficient to sa}^ that his sovereign end 
and aim in concealing his life and actions, his search 
for the absolute, in other words, his great work, was 
Freedom, the possession of his hours, the solitude of 
his laborious nights, — the creation, in short, of his 
Comedie Humaine. 

"Balzac was called during his lifetime the 'most 
prolific of novelists.' Since his death he has been called 
the first of novelists. Without making any invidious 
categories which might wound illustrious contempora- 
ries, it will be strictly true, I think, to say that such a 
term is not praise enough for a power like his. They 
are not novels, these imperishable books of the great 
critic, as novels were understood before his day. He is, 
and pre-eminently, the critic of human life ; he has 
written, not alone for the pleasures of the imagination, 
but for the archives of moral history, the memoirs of 
the half-century which has now just passed. He has 
done for that historic period what another great, but 
13 



194 Honore de Balzac. 

less thorough worker, Alexis Monteil, endeavored to do 
for the France of the past. 

"The novel was to Balzac a frame and pretext for an 
almost universal examination of the ideas, sentiments, 
customs, habits, legislation, arts, trades, costumes, 
localities, in short, of all that constituted the lives of his 
contemporaries. Thanks to him, no earlier epoch of our 
country will be known to the future like ours. What 
would we not give, we seekers of to-day, if each van- 
ished half-century had been transmitted to us. living b} r 
a Balzac. We make our children read a fragment of 
the past, reconstructed with immense labor of erudition, 
' Rome in the time of Augustus,' and the da} T will 
come when learned men, writing such histories, will 
turn to the France of Balzac's period and draw their 
information from authenticity itself. The criticism of 
contemporaries on such and such a character presented 
in Balzac's books, on the style, the method, the inten- 
tions and the manner of the author, will then seem 
what alread}^ they are beginning to seem, secondary 
considerations. The future will not call this vast work 
to account for imperfections which appear in all crea- 
tions of the human brain ; on the contrary, it will value 
even the prolixity, the excess of detail, which to us. 
seem defects, and yet maj' not wholly satisfy the in- 
terest and the curiosity of the readers of the future. 

" Let us sa}^, then, to the readers of the year 2000, or 
3000, who will still bear some resemblance to the men of 
to-day, no matter what progress they have been able to 
make, — to those perfected spirits who will have our 
needs, our passions, and our dreams, as, in spite of our 
own progress, we too have the passions, needs, and 



Honore de Balzac. 195 

dreams of the human natures which preceded us, — to 
them let us say that those among us who have the honor 
to be called to testify before the work of Balzac declare : 
4 This is truth,' — not absolute philosophical truth, which 
Balzac did not seek and this era has not found ; but the 
true reality of our intellectual, ph} T sical, and moral con- 
dition. This collected whole of simple narratives, these 
parables seldom complicated, this multitude of fictitious 
personages, these interiors, chateaus, garrets, these 
myriad aspects of county and city life, all this work of 
fancy is, thanks to a gift of marvellous clear-sighted- 
ness and to the exercise of extreme conscientiousness, a 
mirror in which imagination has shown reality. Do not 
seek in this history of facts the names of the models 
who passed before this magic glass ; the types it has 
preserved are anonymous. Nevertheless, know this 
(for here is a great prodigy of art) : each of these t}<pes 
sums up in itself a whole varietj- of the human species ; 
and Balzac, who sought the absolute in a certain order 
of things, came near finding in his own work the solu- 
tion of a problem unknown until his day, — complete 
reality in complete fiction. Yes, readers of the future, 
the men of 1 830 were as bad, as good, as craz}', and as 
virtuous, as intelligent and as stupid, as romantic and 
as matter-of-fact, as prodigal and as keen after gain as 
Balzac shows them to you. His contemporaries have 
not all been willing to admit it. That need not astonish 
you. All, nevertheless, have read his works in which 
they felt their own hearts beating ; they have read them 
with anger or — with exultation. 

" If we judge Balzac in detail, he cannot, any more 
than other great masters of the present and the past, 



196 Honore de Balzac. 

escape all critical severity. Bat when we examine in 
its totalit}* his might}' work, be we critic, public, or 
fellow-artists, we must all agree, or wellnigh agree, 
on one point, namely,* — that in the class of work to 
which it belongs nothing more complete ever issued 
from the brain of a writer. I imself, when I have 
read, one by one, these extraordinary books as they 
came from the press, I did not like them all. Some 
shocked m}' tastes, my convictions, my sympathies. 
At times I was tempted to say, •' This is too long,' or 
' That is wearisome.' Others seemed to me fantastic, 
and made me say to myself with regret, ' What is the 
good of it ; what does he mean ? ' But when Balzac, 
having found the secret of his destiny, and solved the 
enigma of his genius, grasped that deep and admirable 
idea of the Comedie Humaine, when, by laborious and 
ingenious classification, he welded all parts of his work 
into a logical whole, each of those parts, even those I 
least liked on their first appearance, took their rightful 
place and assumed their real value. Each of these 
books is, in fact, a page of the great work, which would 
be incomplete without this important page. 

" For this reason it is necessary to read the whole of 
Balzac. Nothing is unimportant to the general work ; 
and we soon perceive that in this immeasurable stretch 
of imagination, to imagination he has sacrificed nothing. 
Eveiy book has been for him an awesome study. And 
when we think that, he had not, like Dumas, the power 
of a marvellous memory, like Lamartine facility of style, 
like Alphonse Karr poetry ready-made in his eyes (not 
to speak of a dozen special qualities gratuitously be- 
stowed on others by nature), but that, on the contrary, 



Honor e de Balzac. 197 

the labor of execution was long extremely difficult to 
him, that form was constantly intractable to his will, 
that ten } T ears of his life were sacrificed on experiments, 
and finally that he was ever struggling with material 
cares, battling with all his strength to reach a time when 
he might live in peace, — thinking of all these things 
one asks one's self what angel and what demon watched 
at his side and revealed to him the good and the evil, 
the real and the ideal, the histoiy of which he has be- 
queathed to us. 

" One of my friends who knew Balzac presented me to 
him, not in the character of muse du departement, but 
as a worthy provincial woman amazed at his talent. 
This was the truth. Though Balzac had not at that 
time produced his greatest works, I was much im- 
pressed by his novel and original manner, and thought 
of him even then as a master to study. He was liv- 
ing in the rue Cassini, in a cheerful little entresol 
near the Observatoiy. It was there, I think, that 
I made the acquaintance of Emmanuel Arago, a man 
who afterwards became a friend of mine, and was 
then a mere lad. One fine day Balzac, having made 
a good sale of a book, affected to despise his entresol, 
and wished to leave it; but after due reflection he 
decided to remain, and contented himself by trans- 
forming his little rooms into a nest of boudoirs a la 
marquise. That done, he invited me to eat ices within 
the walls, now huug with silk and edged with lace. I 
laughed heartily, not dreaming that he felt an} T serious 
want of such vain luxury, and supposing it was noth- 
ing more than a passing fancy. I was mistaken ; these 
needs of a dainty imagination became the tyrants of 



198 Honore de Balzac. 

his life ; to satisfy them, he often sacrificed the com- 
monest comfort. Henceforth he lived somewhat in this 
way, — lacking necessaries in the midst of his superflui- 
ties, and depriving himself of soup and coffee rather 
than of silver-ware and Chinese porcelains. Soon re- 
duced to amazing expedients not to part with the gew- 
gaws that pleased his eye, artist by fancy, child of 
golden dreams, he .lived through his fancy in a fairy 
palace ; obstinate withal, he accepted deliberately all 
anxieties and all deprivations rather than let reality 
dispossess him of his dream. 

" I did not say much of my own literary projects to 
Balzac. He did not believe in them, or rather he did 
not care to examine whether I was capable of anything. 
I did not ask his advice ; be would have told me that 
he kept it for himself, and he would have said it as 
much from ingenuous modesty as from ingenuous ego- 
tism ; for he had, as I have said, his wa} r of being 
modest under an appearance of arrogance, a fact which 
I found out later with agreeable surprise. And as for 
his egotism, he had his reactions to self-devotion and 
generosity. His company was very agreeable ; a little 
fatiguing in its rush of words to me, who am not ready 
enough with an answer to vary the subjects of conver- 
sation sufficiently ; but his soul was of great serenity, 
and I never, at airy moment, saw him ill-humored. He 
would climb, with his big stomach, all the five stories 
of the house on the qiw Michel where I lived, and 
come in puffing and laughing and talking before he 
could get his breath. Among his intimate friends he 
had a nickname, which he alwaj's signed to his letters ; 
with me it had passed into a habit to call him " Dom 



Honore de Balzac. 199 

Mar." He used to pick up my manuscript from the 
table and cast his eyes over it as if he meant to inform 
himself of what it was about ; but almost immediately 
his thoughts would go back to the work he had in hand ; 
and he would begin to relate it to me, and I must say I 
found that more instructive than the hindrances which La 
Touche, disheartening doubter, opposed to m} T ideas. 

" I had no theories of an}' kind when I began to write, 
and I think I had never had an}' when the wish to write 
a novel placed a pen in my hand. That did not prevent 
my instincts from making for me, without my knowl- 
edge, the theory which I will now explain and which I 
have generally followed without taking deliberate ac- 
count of it, — a theory which is still, at the present 
moment under discussion. 

" According to this theory, a novel should be a work 
of poetry as much as of analysis. It must have true 
situations and true characters, even real ones, grouped 
around a type which is to present and sum up the prin- 
cipal sentiment or idea of the book. This type usually 
represents the passion of love, because nearly all novels 
are histories of love. According to nn' theory (and here 
is where it begins) this type, this love we must idealize, 
not fearing to give it all the powers to which we con- 
sciously aspire ourselves, and all the sufferings which we 
have seen or of which we have felt the tortures. But, in 
any case, that type, that love, must not be degraded by 
the hazard of events ; it must either die or triumph ; 
and we must not fear to give it an exceptional impor- 
tance in life, powers above the ordinary, charms or suf- 
ferings which go far bej'ond the usual limit of human 
things, and even beyond the probable as judged b}' 



200 Honor4 de Balzac. 

the majority of minds. To sum up this theory briefly, 
it is : the idealization of the sentiment which makes 
the subject, leaving to the art of the novelist the duty 
of placing that subject in conditions and in a frame of 
reality suitable to bring it vividly into relief. 

" Is this theory a true one? I think it is ; but it is 
not, and ought not to be absolute. Balzac, after a time, 
made me comprehend, by the variety and force of his 
compositions, that it was allowable to sacrifice the ideal- 
ization of a subject to the truth of a picture, to the just 
criticism of society, to humanity itself. Balzac summed 
this up completely when he said to me later: 'You are 
seeking mtm as he should be ; I take him such as he is. 
Believe me, we are both right. The two roads lead to 
the same place. I, too, like exceptional beings — I am 
one myself. In fact, I need them as foils to my com- 
monplace beings ; and I never sacrifice them unless under 
necessity. But commonplace beings interest me more 
than they interest you. I make them grow, I idealize 
them, inversely, in their ugliness and stupidity. I give 
their deformities grotesque proportions. You can't do 
that ; and you are right not to be willing to look at 
beings and things which would give 3'ou the nightmare. 
Idealize in the lovely and the beautiful ; that 's a 
woman's work.' 

" Balzac said this without an}^ concealed disdain or 
disguised sarcasm. He was sincere in the brotherly 
feeling with which he spoke, and he has idealized 
woman far too much to be suspected of any degrading 
theory about her. 

"Balzac travelled a great deal, and his friends in 
Paris often lost all trace of him. He had bought a 



Honore de Balzac, 201 

little house at Ville-d'Avray, called Les Jardies, and 
from there he dated man}' of the letters which he wrote 
in Russia, Italy, and elsewhere. Nevertheless, he lived 
at Les Jardies a good deal, and did an enormous amount 
of work there. Also he passed whole summers, months 
or weeks, in the provinces, — at Angouleme, at Issoudun 
in Touraine, and with me in Beny. He was also in Sar- 
dinia, where he believed, or pretended to believe, he 
should rind strange things. He searched for treasures 
'and found none but those he bore within him, — his 
intellect, his spirit of observation, his marvellous ca- 
pacity, his strength, his gayetj T , bis goodness of heart, 
in a word, his genius. 

" The last of his journeys resulted in his marriage ; 
but our poor Dom Mar did not long enjoy domestic hap- 
piness. A disease of the heart, about wmich he had 
often spoken to me and of which he thought himself 
cured, carried him off at the end of four months of mar- 
ried life. He was shipwrecked in port, that bold and 
resolute mariner. All his life he had desired to many 
a woman of quality, to have no debts, to find in his 
own home affection and intellectual companionship. He 
deserved to attain his wish, for he had done gigantic 
service, fulfilled a splendid mission, and abused but 
one thing — work. Sober in all respects, his morals 
were pure ; he dreaded excesses as the death of talent ; 
he cherished women by his heart or his head, and his life 
from early youth was that of an anchorite ; for, although 
he has written some coarse books and passed in his day 
for an expert in gallantry (having written the Physiol- 
ogie du Mariage and the Contes Drolatiques), he was 
much less rabelaisian than benedictine. He loved 



202 Honore de Balzac. 

chastity as a choice thing, and attacked the sex only 
through curiosity ; when he found a curiosity equal to 
his own he worked the mine with the cynicism of a con- 
fessor ; that is how he himself expressed it. But when 
he met with health of mind and body (I repeat his own 
words) he was happy as a child in being able to speak 
of true love and rise into the higher regions of emotion. 
" He was a trifle hypercritical, but naively so; and 
this great anatomist of life let us see that he learned 
all, both of good and evil, by observation of facts or- 
contemplation of the idea, not bj>- experience. At- 
tached, I know not why, to the cause of monarchy to 
which he thought himself bound, he was so impartial 
by nature that the noblest personages in his books are 
often republicans or socialists. There were times when 
he seemed to have the tastes of a parvenu ; they were 
really at heart the tastes of an artist. He loved curios- 
ities far more than luxury. He dreamed of avarice, and 
ruined himself constantly. He boasted of despoiling 
others, and never robbed an}' one but himself. In cer- 
tain of his books he has put his ideal in the boudoir of 
a duchess ; elsewhere we find it in the customs of an 
atelier. He has seen the amusing side and also the 
grand side of all social destinies, of all parties, all 
systems. He has laughed at the stupid Bonapartists, 
and pitied the unfortunate Bonapartists ; he has re- 
spected all disinterested convictions. He charmed the 
ambitious youth of the centurj 7 with golden dreams ; 
he flung it in the dust or the mud by laying bare before 
it the end of base ambitions, dissolute women, faithless 
friends, shame, remorse. He has branded on the fore- 
head those great ladies whom he forced his young men 



Honore de Balzac. 203 

to adore. He has swept awa} T the millions and des- 
troyed the temples of delight in which his fancy revelled, 
to show, behind these chimeras, that toil and honor 
alone remain erect amid the ruins. He has pictured, 
con amore, the seductions of vice, and vigorously pro- 
claimed the horrors of its contagion. He has seen all 
and said all, comprehended all, and divined all — how 
then can he be immoral? Impartialit}' is eminently 
. sound and healthy for good minds ; the minds it could 
corrupt are corrupted already, and so corrupted that 
impartial truth is unable to heal them. 

"■ Balzac has been reproached for having no principles 
because he has, as I think, no positive convictions on 
questions of fact in religion, art, politics, or even love. 
But nowhere in his books do I see vice made respect- 
able or virtue degraded in the reader's eyes. If virtue 
succumbs, if vice triumphs, the meaning of the book is 
not left doubtful ; society is condemned. 

" It would, indeed, be puerile to declare Balzac a writer 
without defects. He would have been, in that case, the 
first whom nature ever created, and in all probability 
the last of his kind. He had, and he knew it himself 
better than those who have said so, essential faults ; a 
labored style, false taste in certain expressions, a notice- 
able lack of proportion in the composition of his works. 
Eloquence and poetr} 7 came to him only when he ceased 
to search for them. He toiled over his work too long, 
and often spoilt it by corrections. These are all great 
defects ; but when they are redeemed by such merits a 
man must be — as he said ingenuously of himself, and 
as he had the right to say — devilishly strong." 

A critic of our day has said of Gautier's portrait of 



204 Honore de Balzac. 

Balzac that it was not critical. This may be true in 
the sense in which it was said, but the portrait will last 
long after the criticism of periods and of schools has 
passed awa} r . It is a true picture of the man's nature, 
and the more valuable because Gautier could not have 
shared any of Balzac's great beliefs, while perceiving, in 
a measure, the spirit that gave birth to them. Was it 
the power of an inner man making itself felt upon his 
naturally sympathetic and receptive mind through his 
affections? At any rate, he has left us the only con- 
temporaneous portrait of Balzac, written by a male 
friend, which is of value. It is given here somewhat 
abridged. 1 

" When I saw Balzac, who was a year older than the 
centurj', for the first time, he was about thirty-six, and 
his personality was one of those that are never forgot- 
ten. In his presence Shakspeare's words in Julius 
Caesar came to my memory ; before him, * nature 
might stand up and say to all the world, " This was a 
man ? " ' He wore the monk's habit of white flannel or 
cashmere, in which, some time later, he made Louis 
Boulanger paint him. What fancy had led him to 
choose, in preference to all other costumes, this partic- 
ular one, which he always wore, I do not know. Per- 
haps it symbolized to his eyes the cloistral life to 
which his work condemned him ; and, benedictine of 
romance, he wore the robe. However that may be, it 
became him wonderfullv. He boasted, showing me his 
spotless sleeves, that he never dropped the least spot of 

1 Portraits contemporains par The'ophile Gautier, 1 vol. G. 
Charpentier et Cie. 5 6me ed. Paris. 1886. 



Honore de Balzac. 205 

ink upon it, ' for,' he added, ' a true literary man ought 
to be clean at his work.' 

" The gown was flung back, disclosing the neck of an 
athlete or a bull, round as the section of a column, 
without visible muscles, and of a satiny whiteness 
which contrasted with the stronger tones of the face. 
At this period Balzac, who was then in the vigor of his 
age, showed signs of a robust health little in keeping 
with the romantic pallor then in vogue. His pure Tou- 
rainean blood glowed in his full cheeks with a healthy 
crimson, and warmly colored those good lips, thick and 
curved, and ever laughing, which a slight moustache 
and an imperial defined, without concealing. The nose 
which was square at the end, divided into two lobes, 
and furnished with nostrils that opened widely, had a 
thoroughly original and individual character ; so that 
Balzac, posing for his bust, commended it to the sculp- 
tor, David of Angers ; ' Pa}' attention to my nose/ he 
said ; ' my nose is a world.' The forehead was hand- 
some, vast, noble, and noticeably whiter than the rest 
of the face, with no lines but a perpendicular one, 
which started from the root of the nose, the bump of 
locality making a very decided projection above the 
eyebrows. His thick hair, which was long, wiry, and 
black, was thrown back over his head like a lion's 
mane. As to the eyes, there were never any like them ; 
the}' had a life, a light, an inconceivable magnetism ; 
the white of the eyeballs was pure, limpid, with a blue- 
ish tinge, like that of an infant or a virgin, inclosing 
two black diamonds, dashed at moments with gold 
reflections, — eyes to make an eagle drop his lids, eyes 
to read through walls and into bosoms, or to terrify a 



206 Honore de Balzac. 

furious wild beast, the eyes of a sovereign, a seer, a 
subjugator. 

" The habitual expression of the face was that of 
puissant hilarity, of Rabelaisian and monachal joy (the 
frock no doubt contributing to the idea) which made 
3*011 think of friar Jean des Entommeures ; but dignified 
withal, and uplifted by a mind of the first order. 

" As usual, Balzac had risen at midnight, and had 
worked until my arrival. His features showed no sign 
of fatigue, except that of a slight brownness beneath the 
eyelids, and he was gayety itself during the whole 
breakfast. Little by little, the conversation turned on 
literature, and he complained of the difficulties of the 
French language. Style troubled him much, and he 
sincere!}' thought he had none ; it is true that at this 
time the critics, as a rule, denied him an}\ The school 
of Hugo, lovers of the sixteenth century and the mid- 
dle-ages, learned in form, rrrythm, structure, periods, 
rich in words, trained in prose by the gj T m nasties of 
verse, following always a master under certain fixed 
conventions, thought little of any writing that was not 
4 well written ; ' that is to say, elegant in tone and 
polished bej*ond measure ; and they thought, moreover, 
that the presentation of modern manners was useless, 
vulgar, and wanting in ' lyricism.' Balzac, in spite of 
the vogue he was beginning to acquire with the pub- 
lic, was not admitted among the gods of romanticism, 
and he knew it. Though the} 7 read his books eagerly 
enough, they did not dwell on the serious aspect of 
them ; in fact, even to his admirers, he was long ' the 
most prolific of our novel-writers,' and nothing more. 
This seems amazing to us now, but I can answer for 



Honore de Balzac. 207 

the truth of it. Consequently, he took unweaving 
pains to form his style, and in his great anxiety for 
correctness he would consult those who were far inferior 
to him. He told me that before putting his name to 
any of his books he had written under various pseudo- 
nyms a score of volumes ' to unlimber his hand.' 

" But to return to the breakfast. While talking, Balzac 
plaj^ed with his knife or his fork, and I noticed that his 
hands were of rare beauty, the hands of a prelate, white, 
with tapering, dimpled fingers, the nails polished and 
rosy. He cherished his hands, and smiled with pleasure 
when an} T one looked at them, attaching a sense of race 
and aristocracy to their beauty. Lord Byron said in 
a note, with visible satisfaction, that Ali Pasha compli- 
mented him on the smallness of his ear, from which 
he had inferred he was a gentleman. Such a remark 
about his hands would have pleased Balzac more than 
any praise of his books. He had, in fact, a slight prej- 
udice against those whose extremities were clumsy. 

" I left him, after agreeing to write for the ' Chronique 
de Paris' (he was then starting it), in which appeared 
my 'Tour en Belgique,' 'La Morte Amoureuse,' the 
4 Chaine d'or,' and other works. Charles de Bernard, 
another of the young men whom Balzac called to his 
assistance, wrote his ' Femme de quarante ans ' and 
the ' Rose jaune ' for the ' Chronique.' Balzac had 
lately invented the ' woman of thirty ; ' his imitator 
added two lustres to that already venerable age, and 
his heroine had an equal success. 

"Whoever knew Balzac familiarly is able to find in 
the Comedie Humaine a crowd of curious details on his 
character and on his work, — more especially in his first 



208 HonorS de Balzac. 

books, in which he had not entirely freed himself from 
his personality, and lacking subjects to observe, he dis- 
sec-ted himself. For instance, the story of Facino Cane 
contains precious indications of the life he led in his 
garret as a young aspirant of fame. The}' are doubly 
precious because they throw light on one side of Balzac's 
life which is very little known, and reveal in him the con- 
sciousness of that powerful faculty of intuition which he 
possessed in so high a degree, and without which the 
realization of his great work would have been impos- 
sible. Balzac, like Vishnu, the Hindu god, possessed 
the gift of avatar, — namely, that of incarnating him- 
self in different bodies, and of living in them at his 
pleasure ; with this difference, that the number of 
Vishnu's avatars is limited to ten, while those of Balzac 
are innumerable ; and what is more, he could evoke them 
at will. Strange as it may seem to say so in this nine- 
teenth century, Balzac was a Seer. His power as an 
observer, his discernment as a physiologist, his genius 
as a writer, do not sufficiently account for the infinite 
variety of the two or three thousand types which play 
a role, more or less important, in his human coined}'. 
He did not copy them ; he lived them ideally. He wore 
their clothes, contracted their habits, moved in their 
surroundings, was themselves during the necessary time. 
Through this faculty came those sustained and logical 
characters, which never contradict and never duplicate 
one another ; personalities endowed with a deep and 
inmost reality, who, to use one of his own expressions, 
compete for their civil rights. Red blood flows in their 
veins in place of the ink which ordinary writers infuse 
into their creations. 



Honore de Balzac. 209 

" And yet Balzac, immense in brain, penetrating 
physiologist, profound observer, intuitive spirit, did 
not possess the literary gift. In him yawned an abyss 
between thought and form. Sometimes he despaired 
of ever crossing it. Into it he flung volume after vol- 
ume, nights of toil without number, essay upon essay, 
without ever filling the gulf ; a whole library of unac- 
knowledged books went into it. A less robust will 
would have been discouraged and overcome ; but Bal- 
zac, happily, had unshaken confidence in his genius, 
which all others ignored. He willed to be a great man, 
and he became one, by the incessant projection of that 
fluid, more powerful than electricit}^, of which he has 
made such subtle analysis in Louis Lambert. 

" Contraiy to the writers of the romantic school, who 
were all remarkable for the fearlessness and facility of 
their execution, producing their fruits almost at the 
same time as their flowers (a double forth-putting 
which seemed involuntary), Balzac, the equal of them 
all in genius, could not find his method of expres- 
sion, or found it only after infinite labor. Hugo says, 
in one of his prefaces, with his Castilian pride : ' I 
do not understand the art of soldering a fine thing 
over a defective one ; I correct the defect in another 
volume.' But Balzac riddled with erasures his tenth 
proof; and when he found me sending back to the 
' Chronique ' the proof of an article (written in a flash at 
the corner of a table) with no corrections except the 
typographical ones, he could not believe, however sat- 
isfied he might be otherwise, that I had done my best. 
' It might have been better if you. had gone over it two 
or three more times,' he would say. 
14 



210 Honor e de Balzac. 

" He used to preach to me a curious literary hygiene, 
with himself for an example. I ought to shut myself 
up for two or three years, drink water, eat vegetables 
like Protogenes, go to bed at six o'clock, get up at 
midnight and work till morning, employ the day in re- 
viewing, expanding, pruning, improving, polishing the 
work of the night ; correcting proofs, taking notes, mak- 
ing the necessary studies, and, above all, living in the 
most absolute chastity. He insisted much on this last 
recommendation, rather rigorous for a young man of 
twenty-five. According to his ideas true chastity de- 
veloped to the highest degree the powers of the mind, 
and gave to those who practised it mj'sterious fac- 
ulties. When I timidly remarked that the greatest 
geniuses had not deprived themselves of love, of pas- 
sion, nor even of pleasure, and cited a few illustrious 
names, Balzac shook his head and answered : ' They 
would have done greater things without them.' 

" It must not be thought that he was jesting in pre- 
scribing these rules, which even a Trappist would have 
thought strict. He was perfectly convinced of their 
efficacy, and spoke with such eloquence that I did, on 
several occasions, conscientiously try this method of 
obtaining genius ; I got up at midnight, took the in- 
spiring coffee (made after a special formula), and sat 
down at m} r writing-table, — on which sleep made no 
delay in dropping my head. ' La Morte Amoureuse ' 
was my only nocturnal production. 

" With his profound instinct for reality, Balzac per- 
ceived that the modern life he wished to paint was gov- 
erned by one mighty fact, — Money. Assuredly no 
man was ever less avaricious than he, but his genius 



Honor e de Balzac. 211 

made him foresee the immense part about to be plaj'ed 
by that metallic hero, more interesting to modern society 
than the Grandisons, the Des Grieux, the Werthers, 
Laras, Renes, and Quentin Durwards. At the period 
when the first novels signed by his name appeared, the 
world had not, in the same degree that it has to-day, 
the absorbing interest, or I might better call it, the fever, 
of gold. California was not discovered ; a few miles 
of railway were all that existed, and no one suspected 
their future ; the} T were looked upon as a new species of 
montagne russe, then fallen into disuse ; the general 
public were ignorant of what we now call ' business ; ' 
bankers alone gambled at the Bourse. The movement 
of capital, the glitter of gold, the calculations, the 
figures, in short, the importance given to money in 
novels, hitherto taken for mere romantic fictions and 
not for serious pictures of life, astonished the sub- 
scribers of the circulating libraries, and the critics set 
to work to add up the sum total expended or brought 
into action by the author. The millions of old Grandet 
were discussed arithmetically; and sober-minded men, 
excited by the enormity of the totals, threw doubts on 
Balzac's financial abilit}', — an ability which was, how- 
ever, really great, and so admitted, later. Stendhal 
says, with disdainful foppishness of manner, ' Before 
sitting down to write I always read three or four pages 
of the Code civil to tone me up.' Balzac, who knew 
so much of mone} T , found poems and dramas in the 
Code. The bankruptcy in Cesar Birotteau stirs us 
like the history of the fall of an empire. The struggle 
between the chateau and the cottage in Les Baysans 
presents as many vicissitudes as the siege of Troy. 



212 Honore de Balzac, 

But these new elements introduced into a novel did not 
please at first. Philosophical analysis, elaborate pict- 
ures of character, descriptions, of a minuteness which 
seemed to have in view a distant future, were thought 
of grievous length, and more often skipped to follow 
the story. Later, it was seen that the author's purpose 
was not to weave the intrigues of a complicated tale, 
but to paint society as a whole, from summit to base, 
with its living beings and its inanimate things. Then 
it was that people began to admire the immense variety 
of his types. I think it is Alexandre Dumas who 
calls Shakspeare ' the greatest creator after God.' The 
words might be applied, with even more justice, to 
Balzac ; for never, in truth, did such a number of living 
beings issue from any other human brain. 

"About the year 1836 Balzac conceived the plan of 
his Comedie Humaine, and attained to a full conscious- 
ness of his genius. He then attached the works already 
written to his general idea, and gave them their place 
in the philosophical categories he had marked out. 
Some novels of pure fancy did not fit in very well, in 
spite of the hooks afterwards attached to them ; but 
these were mere details, lost in the immensit}* of the 
whole, like the ornaments of another style in a noble 
edifice. 

"I have said that Balzac worked laboriously, and, 
stubborn founder that he was, returned the metal to 
the pot a dozen times if it did not completely fill the 
mould. Like Palissy, he would have burned the furni- 
ture, the floors, even the beams of his house to keep up 
the fire of his furnace, and forego no experiment. The 
severest necessities never induced him to deliver a work 



Honore de Balzac. 21 3 

on which he had not spent his last effort ; he gave 
many admirable examples of this literary conscientious- 
ness. When, sitting before his table in his monkish 
robe in the silence of the night, with the white sheets 
lying before him, on which fell the light of seven candles, 
which he always used concentrated by a green shade, 
he forgot all, and then began a struggle greater than 
that of Jacob with the angel, that of form and idea. 
In the morning, when he issued from that battle, wearied 
but not vanquished, the fire being out and the atmos- 
phere of the room chilly, his head smoked and his body 
exhaled a sort of mist like that we see from a horse in 
winter. Sometimes a single sentence would occup} T a 
whole night. It would be made and remade, twisted, 
kneaded, hammered, lengthened, shortened, written in 
a dozen different ways, and, singular to relate, the 
proper form, the absolutely best, did not present itself 
until after all approximative forms had been exhausted. 
No doubt the metal did often flow with a fuller and 
freer current, but there are very few pages in Balzac 
which are identical with the first cop}\ 

" His method of proceeding was as follows : When he 
had long borne and lived a subject, he wrote, in a 
rapid, uneven, blotted, almost hieroglyphic writing, 
a species of outline on several pages. These pages 
went to the printing-office, from which the}'' were re- 
turned in placards ; that is to say, in detached columns 
in the centre of large sheets. He read these proofs at- 
tentively ; for the}' already gave to his embryo work 
that impersonal character which manuscript never pos- 
sesses ; and he applied to this first sketch the great 
critical facult}' with which he was gifted, precisely as 



214 Honore de Balzac. 

though he were judging of another man's work. Then 
he began operations ; approving or disapproving he 
maintained or corrected, but, above all, he added. 
Lines started from the beginning, middle, or end of 
sentences, and made their wa} T to the margins on the 
right or left or top or bottom, leading to amplifications, 
insertions, deletions, epithets, and adverbs. After some 
hours' work the paper might have been taken for a draw- 
ing of fireworks by a child. Rockets, darting from the 
original text, exploded on all sides. Then there were 
crosses, simple crosses, crosses re-crossed like those of 
a blazon, stars, suns, Arabic figures, letters, Greek, 
Roman, or French, all imaginable signs mingled with 
erasures. Strips of paper, fastened on hy wafers or 
pins, were added to the insufficient margins, and were 
rayed with lines of writing, very fine to save room, and 
full themselves of erasures ; for a correction was hardly 
made before that again was corrected. Bj r this time 
the original proof had almost disappeared in the midst 
of this apparentl}' cabalistic scribble, which the compos- 
itors passed from hand to hand, each unwilling to do 
more than one hour of Balzac. 

" The following day the proofs came back, all correc- 
tions made, and the bulk of course doubled. Balzac 
set to work again, — always amplifying ; adding here a 
trait, there a detail, a picture, an observation of man- 
ners, a characteristic word, an effective sentence ; 
pressing the idea more and more into the form, and 
getting alwaj'S nearer to his inward conception ; choos- 
ing, like a painter, from three or four outlines the final 
line. Often this tremendous labor ended with an in- 
tensity of attention, a clearness of perception of which 



Honore de Balzac. 215 

he alone was capable. He would see that the thought 
was warped by the execution ; that an episode predom- 
inated ; that a figure which he meant should be secon- 
darj', for the general effect, was projecting out of his 
plan. Then with one stroke of his pen he bravely 
annihilated the result of four or five nights of labor. 
He was heroic at such times. 

" I have seen at Les Jardies, on the shelves of a book- 
case which contained only his own works, each different 
proof of the same book bound in a separate volume, 
from the first placard to the finished volume ; and the 
comparison of Balzac's thought in its various stages 
was a curious study and contained many useful literary 
lessons. Near to these volumes, by the bye, was a 
shabby old book of unpleasant appearance, bound in 
black morocco without punches or gilding, which at- 
tracted nrf attention. 'Take it down,' said Balzac, 
4 it is an unpublished work of mine, and has its value.' 
It bore the title Comptes Melancholiqites, and con- 
tained a list of all his debts, the dates at which his 
notes fell clue, the bills of his tradesmen, and the whole 
array of threatening documents which the Stamp legal- 
izes. This volume, as if in derisive contrast, stood 
side by side with the Contes Drolatiques, ' to which 
they are not the sequel,' said Balzac, laughing. 

"In spite of this laborious manner of working, Balzac 
produced a great deal, — thanks to his superhuman will 
assisted by the temperament of an athlete and the se- 
clusion of a monk. When he had some important work 
on hand he would write sixteen or eighteen hours out 
of the twenty-four for two or three consecutive months ; 
he granted to his animalit3 r only six hours' sleep, which 



216 Honore de Balzac. 

was heavy, feverish, and convulsive from the torpor of 
digestion caused by his hasty meals. At such times 
he disappeared completely ; even his best friends lost 
trace of him. Then he would reappear as if from un- 
der ground, flourishing his work over his head, laugh- 
ing his heart} 7 laugh, applauding himself with perfect 
naivete, and bestowing on his work the praises he asked 
of none. No author was ever so indifferent to articles 
and criticisms on his books. He left his reputation to 
make itself without raising a finger to help it, and never 
did he court the journalists. 

" Sometimes he would come to nry rooms of a morn- 
ing, breathless, tired-out, giddy with the fresh air, like 
Vulcan escaping from his forge, and fling himself on 
the sofa. His long night's work had made him hungiy, 
and he would pound up sardines and butter, making a 
sort of pomade of them which reminded him of the 
rillettes of Tours, and spreading it on bread. It was 
his favorite food ; and he had no sooner eaten it than 
he fell asleep, telling me to wake him at the end of an 
hour. I paid no attention to this request ; on the con- 
traiy, I stopped the noises of the house to prolong that 
well-earned sleep. When Balzac woke of himself and 
saw the twilight gathering its gray tints upon the sky, 
he bounded up, called me a traitor, thief, assassin ; I 
had made him lose ten thousand francs ; if he had been 
awakened he should have followed out the thread of a 
story which would have brought him in at least that 
sum, — without counting reprints ; I had made him 
miss rendezvous with bankers, editors, duchesses ; he 
should be too late to take up a note ; -that fatal sleep 
might cost him millions. But I was well accustomed 



Honor e de Balzac. 217 

to his hyperboles, and consoled myself readily when I 
saw how the fine Tourainean color had come back to his 
rested face. 

"The great Goethe held three things in horror, one 
of which was tobacco-smoke. Balzac, like the Jupiter of 
the German Olympus, could not endure tobacco under 
any form ; he anathematized a pipe and proscribed 
cigars ; he would not even allow of the smallest Span- 
ish papelito ; the Oriental narghile alone found favor in 
his sight, and then only as a curious bibelot possessing 
local color. His philippics against Nicot's herb were 
not like those of a certain doctor who, during a disser- 
tation on the horrors of tobacco, took plentiful pinches 
from a snuff-box beside him. Balzac never smoked. 
His Traite des Excitants contains an indictment in 
form against tobacco, and there is no doubt that if he 
had been sultan, like Amurath, he would have cut off 
the heads of relapsed or refractory smokers. He re- 
served all his excesses for coffee, which did him so much 
harm and perhaps killed him, though he was organized 
for a centenarian. 1 

" In 1839 Balzac was living at Chaillot in the rue des 
Batailles, a house from which he had a fine view of the 
course of the Seine, the Champs de Mars, the Ecole 
Militaire, the dome of the Invalides, a large part of 
Paris, and the slopes of Meudon. He had surrounded 
himself with some luxury knowing that in Paris no one 
believes in poverty-stricken talent, and that a well-to- 

1 We may add to these personal traits that he never carried 
money or a watch. Sometimes this brought him into difficulties. 
He would walk into Paris from Les Jardies and have no means of 
paying his fare hack, or getting a dinner. 



218 Honore de Balzac. 

do appearance often leads to doing well. To this period 
belong his passing fanc} T for dandyism and elegance, 
the famous blue coat and gilt buttons, the cane with 
the turquoise knob, the appearance at the Bouffes 
and the Opera, and his more frequent visits in society, 
where his sparkling wit and animation made him wel- 
come, — useful visits, moreover, for the3 T gave him more 
than one model. It was not easy to make one's way 
into his house, which was guarded like the garden of 
the Hesperides. Two or three passwords were neces- 
sary, which were changed frequently, for fear they 
should become known. I remember a few. To the 
porter we said, 'The plum season has come/ on which 
he allowed us to cross the threshold. To the servant 
who rushed to the staircase when the bell rang it was 
necessary to murmur, ' I bring some Brussels lace ; ' 
and if you assured him that ' Madame Bertrand was 
quite well,' 3-011 were admitted forthwith. This non- 
sense amused Balzac immensely ; and it was perhaps 
necessary, to keep out bores, and other visitors still 
more disagreeable. 

" One of Balzac's dreams was of friendship, — heroic, 
devoted friendship ; two souls, two valors, two intel- 
lects blended in one will. That of Pierre and Jaffier 
in Otway's ' Venice Preserved ' had alwa}'s struck him 
and he often talked of it. His Histoire des Treize is 
this idea enlarged and complicated, — a powerful unity, 
composed of several persons, all acting blindly for one 
agreed end. Real life and intellectual life were never 
as defined and separate in Balzac as in other authors, 
and his creations often followed him from his study. 
He wished to form an association in the style of that 



Honor e de Balzac. 219 

which united Ferragns, Montriveau, Ronquerolles, and 
their companions ; only there was no question of their 
bold strokes, — the actual plan confining itself to some- 
thing much simpler, as follows : A certain number of 
friends were to stand by each other on all occasions ; 
they were to work according to their capacity for the 
success or the fortunes of whichever one of them might 
be designated, — with return of service, of course. 
Much delighted with his scheme, Balzac recruited aux- 
iliaries, whom he brought into relations with each other 
with as many precautions as though the matter con- 
cerned a political society or a branch of the Carbonari. 
When the number was complete he assembled the 
adepts and explained the object of the societ}\ Need- 
less to say that all declared their satisfaction without 
discussion, and the statutes were voted with enthusiasm. 
No one possessed the gift of stirring, super-exciting, 
intoxicating even the coolest heads and the sedatest 
minds like Balzac. He had an overflowing, tumultuous, 
seductive eloquence that carried you off your feet 
whether 3011 would or no ; no objections were possible 
against him ; he would drown them in such a deluge of 
words that you had to be silent. Besides, he had an 
answer for everything, and he would fling you a glance, 
so flashing, so illuminated, so charged with electric fluid 
that he infused his desires into your mind. 

" The association, which counted among its members 
Granier de Cassagnac, Leon Grozlan, Louis Desnoyers, 
Jules Sandeau, Merle (known as the handsome Merle), 
myself, and some others whom it is useless to name, 
was called Le Cheval Rouge [the Red Horse]. Why 
the Red Horse, you will ask me, any more than the 



220 Honore de Balzac. 

Golden Lion or the Maltese Cross ? The first meeting 
of the associates took place at a restaurant, on the quai 
de l'Entrepot, at end of the pont de la Tournelle, the 
sign of which was a quadruped rubrica pictus ; and 
this had given Balzac the idea of the name, which 
seemed sufficiently queer, unintelligible, and cabalistic. 

;i When it was necessaiy to discuss some project 
Balzac, elected by acclamation grand master of the 
Order, sent a faithful messenger to each horse (the 
slang appellation the members went by among them- 
selves) with a letter, in which was drawn a small red 
horse, and the words ' Stable, such a day, such a 
place.' In society, though we all knew each other 
(most of us for half our lifetimes), we were to avoid 
speaking, or else meet coldly, to escape all suspicion 
of connivance. Sometimes in a salon Balzac would 
pretend to meet me for the first time, and then, with 
winks and gi'imaces such as actors use for their asides, 
he would seem to be saying : ' See how well I pla}- my 
part.' 

" What was the object of the Cheval Eouge? Was 
it organized to change the government, establish a new 
religion, found a school of philosoptry, rule men, seduce 
women? Very much less than that. We were to get 
possession of newspapers, invade the theatres, seat 
ourselves in the armchairs of the Academ}', win a 
string of decorations, and wind up modestly as peers 
of France, ministers, and millionnaires. All that was 
easy — according to Balzac ; it was only necessaiy to 
have a perfect mutual understanding ; such common- 
place ambitions ought to prove to us the moderation of 
our characters. 



Honore de Balzac. 221 

" I smile to irryself as I here betray, after so many 
years, the secret of this literary free-masonry, — which 
had no result whatever. But, at the time, we took 
the thing seriously ; we imagined we were the Treize 
themselves, and felt surprised that we could not pass 
through barriers as they did ; but the world is so ill- 
contrived! After four or five meetings the Cheval 
Rouge ceased to exist, most of the horses being unable 
to pay for their oats in the symbolic manger ; and the 
association, organized to obtain all things, was dis- 
solved because the members often lacked fifteen francs, 
the cost of the reckoning. Each therefore plunged 
back alone into the battle of life, fighting with his own 
weapons ; and this explains wiry it was that Balzac 
never belonged to the Academ} T , and died a chevalier 
onty of the Legion of honor. 

"The idea, nevertheless, was a good one. Others, 
who adopted it, put it in practice without the same 
romantic phantasmagoria, and succeeded. 

"I am writing my recollections of Balzac just as they 
come to me, without attempting to give connection to 
that which cannot be connected. Moreover, as Boileau 
has told us, ' transitions are the great difficulty of 
poetry,' and, I may add, of essa}'S, — but modern jour- 
nalists have not the conscience, nor the leisure, of the 
Parnassian legislator. 

"Madame de Girardin was one of the women who 
professed a great admiration for Balzac ; he was fully 
alive to it, and showed his gratitude by frequent 
visits, — he so chaiy, and rightly too, of his time and 
his hours of labor. No woman ever possessed in a 
greater degree than Delphine, as we allowed ourselves 



222 Honore de Balzac. 

to call her familiarly among ourselves, the art of bring- 
ing out the qualities of her guests. With her they were 
always at their best, and they left her salon astonished 
at themselves. No pebble so unpolished but what she 
could strike a spark from it, and on Balzac, as } t ou may 
well believe, there was no need to strike the flint long ; 
he sparkled instantly, and flamed up. Balzac was not 
precisely a conversationalist, quick in reply, flinging a 
keen or decisive word into the discussion, changing the 
subject imperceptibly as the talk flowed on, touching all 
things with a light hand, and never exceeding a quiet 
half-smile. On the contraiy, he was full of animation, 
eloquence, and an irresistible brio / and, as eveiy one 
stopped talking to listen to him, conversation in his 
presence was apt to degenerate into soliloquy. The 
point of departure was soon forgotten, — he passed 
from anecdote to philosophical reflection, from social 
observations to local descriptions ; and as he spoke his 
cheeks would color, his eyes became strangely luminous, 
his voice took man}- inflections, and sometimes he would 
burst out laughing at the droll apparitions which he saw 
before he spoke of them. At the least provocation his 
natural gayety broke forth, swelling his strong chest ; 
it sometimes disturbed the squeamish, but they were all 
forced to share it, no matter what efforts the} 7 made to 
keep their gravity. Do not think, however, that Balzac 
ever sought to amuse the gallery ; he simply yielded to 
a sort of inward intoxication, — sketching with rapid 
strokes and with comic intensity and incomparable 
drollery the fantastic images that were dancing in the 
dark chambers of his brain. At the time when he was 
writing TJn Debut dans la vie he wanted proverbs for 



Honore de Balzac. 223 

his rapin Mistigris, and Madame de Girardin, on the 
other hand, was also in search of sayings for the famous 
lady with the seven little chairs in the ' Courrier de 
Paris/ My help was occasionally called in ; and if a 
stranger had entered the room and seen Delphine, with 
her white fingers thrust through the meshes of her 
golden hair, profoundly thinking, and Balzac sitting on 
the arm of a big chair (in which Emile de Girardin was 
usually asleep), his hands at the bottom of his trousers 
pockets, his waistcoat rubbed up over his stomach, one 
foot dangling with rhythmic motion, his face expressing 
by its contracted muscles some extraordinary struggle 
of the mind, and me, curled up among the cushions of 
the sofa like an hallucinated theriaki, — this stranger, I 
say, would never have suspected what we were about ; he 
would have thought that Balzac was dreaming of an- 
other Xys, Madame de Girardin of a role for Rachel, 
and I of some sonnet. Ah, the good evenings which 
can never come again ! Who would then have believed 
that grand and superb woman, carved in antique mar- 
ble, that sturdy, robust, apparently long-lived man, 
who had within him the vigor of a wild boar and a bull, 
half Hercules, half faun, and was framed to see a hun- 
dred years, would soon be laid to sleep, one at Mont- 
martre, the other in Pere-Lachaise, and I should alone 
remain to record these memories alreacly so far away, 
and about to perish forever unless I write them down ? 

" Balzac had the makings of a great actor in him. He 
possessed a full, sonorous, resonant voice, which he knew 
how to moderate and render soft at will, and he read 
admirably, — a talent lacking to most actors. When 
he related anything he played it, with intonations, facial 



224 Honore de Balzac. 

expressions, and gestures which no comedian ever ex- 
celled, as I think. On one occasion, at Les Jardies, he 
read us Mercadet, — the original Mercadet, fuller and 
more complicated than the pla} r afterwards arranged 
for the Gyumase, with tact and ability, by d'Ennery. 
Balzac, who read like Tieck, without indicating either 
acts or scenes or names, assumed a special voice per- 
fectly recognizable for each personage. The organs 
with which he endowed the various creditors were of 
spleen-dispelling comed\- ; thej' were of all kinds, hoarse, 
honied, hurried, drawling, threatening, plaintive. This 
one yelped, that one mewed, others growled and grum- 
bled and howled, in tones possible and impossible. In 
the first place, Debt chanted a solo, presently sustained 
b\' a vast chorus of creditors ; the}' came from every- - 
where, — from behind the stove, from under the bed, 
from the drawers of the bureau ; the flue of the chimney 
vomited them ; they squeezed through the key-hole ; 
some scaled the window like lovers ; others sprang, like 
a jack-in-the-box, from a trunk, — 't was a mob, an up- 
roar, an invasion, a tidal wave. In vain Mercadet 
tried to shake them off, others came to the assault, and 
far on the horizon dark swarms of creditors were sug- 
gested, like legions of ants making for their pre}'. I 
don't know whether the play were better so, but no 
representation of it ever had the same effect upon me. 

" During this reading of Mercadet Balzac, who had 
sprained his ankle by slipping on his steep property, 
lay on a sofa in the salon of Les Jardies. Some sharp 
thing passing through the covering pricked his leg, and 
annoyed him. Picking it out, he said, ' The chintz is 
too thin, the hay comes through.' Franyois, the Caleb 



Honore de Balzac. 225 

of this Ravenswood, not liking any jest on the splen- 
dors of the manor, corrected his master and said 'the 
horse-hair.' ' Then that upholsterer has cheated me ! ' 
cried Balzac ; i I particularly told him to put hay. 
Damned thief! ' 

" The splendors of Les Jardies, however, existed only 
in dreams. All Balzac's friends remember how they as- 
sisted in decorating the walls (left in the bare plaster 
or covered with gra} T paper) by writing thereon, ' Rose- 
wood panels,' ' Gobelin tapestries,' ' Venetian mir- 
ror,' ' Picture by Raphael.' Gerard de Nerval had 
already decorated an apartment in the same wa}\ As 
for Balzac, he really imagined it was all gold and mar- 
ble and silk, — but, though he never furnished Les 
Jardies, and though he did sometimes make his friends 
laugh with his chimeras, he has built himself an eternal 
dwelling, a monument more durable than bronze or 
marble, a vast cit}~, peopled with his creations and 
gilded with his glory. 

"No one can pretend to write a complete biography 
of Balzac. All relations with him were broken into from 
time to time by gaps, absences, disappearances. Work 
ruled his life ; and he had, with a very kind and tender 
heart, the selfishness of a hard worker. Who would 
have dreamed of being angry with him for negligence 
or apparent forgetfulness after seeing the results of his 
flights and seclusions? When, the work accomplished, 
he reappeared, you would have thought he had parted 
from you the night before ; he took up the interrupted 
conversation as though six months had not elapsed. 
He travelled much in France to study the localities 
where he placed his provincial and his country scenes ; 
15 



226 Honore de Balzac. 

and he stayed with friends in Touraine or La Charente, 
where he found a peace his creditors did not alwaj's 
let him have in Paris. Occasionally, after some great 
work was finished, he allowed himself a longer excur- 
sion, to Germany, Northern Italy, or Switzerland ; but 
such journeys rapidly made, with anxieties about notes 
falling due, work to deliver, and a limited viaticum, 
often harassed him more than the}' rested him. 

"Contrary to the habit of many illustrious literary 
men who are fed by their own genius, Balzac read a 
great deal and very rapidly. He loved books, and 
had collected a fine library which he meant to be- 
queath to his native town, until the indifference of his 
compatriots towards him made him relinquish the idea. 
He absorbed in short time the voluminous works of 
Swedenborg belonging to his mother, who was occu- 
pied in studying mysticism at one period. To this we 
owe jSeraphita, one of the most wonderful productions 
of modern literature. Never did Balzac approach — 
never did he clasp ideal beauty so closely as in this 
book. The ascent of the mountain has indeed some- 
thing ethereal, supernatural, luminous, which lifts you 
above this earth. The only colors he employs are the 
blue of the heavens and the white of the snow, with 
pearly tones for shadows. I know nothing more en- 
trancing than that opening. The panorama of Norway 
with " its serrated edges like a granite lace " seen 
from those heights, dazzles me and gives me vertigo. 
Louis Lambert shows the same influences ; but soon 
Balzac, who had taken wings from the mystics to soar 
into the infinite, returned to this earth on which we 
dwell ; though his strong lungs were able to breathe the 



Honor e de Balzac. 227 

subtile air which is death to feebler beings. After these 
flights he returned from that upper-world to our lower 
life ; perhaps his noble genius would too quickly have 
passed from sight had he continued to rise to the im- 
measurable immensities of the science of mind, and 
we ought to consider it a fortunate thing that Louis 
Lambert and Seraphita were the only doors he opened 
into the world invisible. 

"As years went on his hard life of nocturnal work 
did, in spite of his strong constitution, leave certain 
traces on Balzac's face ; and I find in Albert Savarus a 
portrait of him, drawn by his own hand, which describes 
him as he was in 1842, with slight modifications, — 
fewer kilograms of weight, for instance, as became the 
man beloved by the Duchesse dArgaiolo and Made- 
moiselle de Watteville. This story, one of the least 
known and least quoted of all his books, contains many 
details on his habits of life and work; one might even 
find, if it were allowable to lift the veil, confidences of 
another nature. 

"Balzac, who has painted women so marvellously, 
must have known them well. In one of his letters to 
his sister, written when he was quite young and com- 
pletely unknown, he reveals the ideal of his life in two 
words, 4 to be famous and to be loved.' The first, 
which all other artists seek, was realized from point to 
point. Did the second meet with its fulfilment? In 
the opinion of those who were most intimate with him 
he practised the chastity he recommended to others. 
During our intimacy, which lasted from 1836 until his 
death, only once did Balzac make allusion, in the ten- 
derest and most respectful terms, to an attachment of 



228 Honore de Balzac. 

his earty youth ; and even then he only told me the 
first name of the woman whose menioiy., after so many 
years, brought the moisture to his eyes. But, had he 
told me more than he did, I would certainly not abuse 
his confidence ; the genius of a great writer belongs to 
the world, but his heart is his own. I pass lightly over 
this tender and delicate side of Balzac's life, — all the 
more that I have nothing to say of it that does not do 
him honor. His reserve and silence were those of an 
honorable man. If he was loved as he desired in his 
dreams, the world has known nothing of it. 

" Do not imagine after this that Balzac was austere or 
prudish in language ; the author of the Contes Drola- 
tiques was too imbued with Rabelais, too -pantagruelist 
himself not to have his merriment ; he knew good 
stories, and could invent them ; his indecorous jol- 
litj^, interlarded with Gallic plain-speaking, would have 
frightened the canting, and made them cry out, ' Shock- 
ing ! ' But those laughing, loquacious lips were silent 
as the grave where serious feelings were concerned. 
Scarcely did he allow his nearest and dearest to guess 
at his love for a foreigner of distinction, — a love which 
I may speak of here because it was crowned by mar- 
riage. It was this passion, dating back a long while, 
which explained his distant journeys, the object of 
which was a mystery to his friends until almost the 
last of his life. 

" About the year 1844 it was that Balzac first began 
to show a taste for old furniture, chests, pottery, and 
Chinese vases. The smallest bit of worm-eaten wood 
which he bought in the rue de Lappe always had some 
illustrious beginning ; and he made out circumstantial 



Honore de Balzac. 229 

genealogies for all his bibelots. He concealed them 
here and there, on account, he said, of his creditors, 
in whose reality I was beginning by this time to lose 
faith. I even amused myself hy spreading a report 
that Balzac had become a millionnaire, and that he 
bought old stockings of the ragman in which to keep 
his ounces, doubloons, Genoese gold-pieces, and double- 
louis, after the manner of Pere Grandet. I told every- 
where of his three vats, like those of Aboulcasem, filled to 
the brim with carbuncles and dinars and omans. ' Theo 
will get my throat cut with his nonsense ! ' said Balzac, 
provoked and delighted. 

" What gave some color to my joke was the new resi- 
dence which Balzac had lately bought in the rue For- 
tunee, quartier Beaujon, then less populated than it is 
now. Here he occupied a mysterious little house which 
sheltered the new fancies of my sumptuous financier. 
When you made your wa} r into this retreat, which was 
not at all easy, for the master of the house denied him- 
self to visitors, you beheld a vast number of luxurious 
and comfortable details much in contradiction to the 
poverty he affected. He admitted me one day, and 
showed me first a dining-room, panelled in old oak, 
with table, mantelpiece, buffets, shelves, and chairs in 
carved wood, fit to rouse the envy of Berruguete, 
Cornejo Duque, or Verbruggen ; then a salon in gold 
damask, with doors, cornices, plinths and window-cas- 
ings in ebony ; a library, with ranges of shelves inlaid 
with tortoise-shell and copper in the style of Boulle ; a 
bath-room done in black and yellow marble, and finished 
in stucco ; a dome-roofed boudoir full of old pictures 
restored by Edmond Hedouin ; and a gallery lighted 



230 Honore de Balzac. 

from above, which I recognized later in Cousin Pons. 
All sorts of curiosities were on the etageres ; Dresden 
and Sevres porcelains, and specimens of pale-green 
crackle. On the staircase, which was covered b} r a car- 
pet, were tall Chinese vases and a magnificent lantern 
suspended by a red-silk cord. 

" 'You certainly have emptied one of Aboulcasem's 
vats ! ' I said, laughing. « You see I was right in call- 
ing you a millionnaire.' 

'"lamas poor as ever,' he replied, with a deprecat- 
ing air ; ' nothing of all this is mine. I have furnished 
the house for a friend whom I am expecting. I am 
only the porter of the hotel.' 

" I quote his actual words. He made the same an- 
swer to other persons, who were as much puzzled as I 
was by it. The mystery was soon after explained by 
his marriage with a lady whom he had long loved. 

" Posterity has begun for Balzac ; every da} T his fame 
grows greater. When he mingled with his contempo- 
raries he was ill-appreciated ; he was seen only by frag- 
ments and under aspects that were often unfavorable. 
Now, the edifice that he built rises higher and higher as 
we recede from it — like the cathedral of some town, 
hidden at its base hy clustering houses, but seen on the 
horizon in all its vastness above the diminished roofs. 
The building is not completed ; but such as it is, it 
awes us by its immensity, and future generations will 
ask who was the giant who raised those mightj- blocks 
and constructed that Babel in which a whole society is 
humming." 



Honore de Balzac. 231 



CHAPTER VIII. 
his sister's narrative concluded. 

I am obliged, though unwillingly, to speak of a law- 
suit which my brother was compelled to institute in 
1836 against the " Revue de Paris," in relation to Le 
Lys dans la Vallee. Not that I wish to revive en- 
mities, God forbid ! but this suit affected his life too 
seriously to allow me to pass it over in silence ; it 
reduced him, for a time, to the distress and anxiety of 
his first literary years just as he was about to triumph 
over them, by depriving him of the support of reviews 
and newspapers, and by exciting much malevolence 
against him. 

The facts were these : While Le Lys dans la Vallee 
was in course of publication in the " Revue de Paris," 
friends in St. Petersburg informed my brother that the 
work was being published in full in that chVv, though 
less than half had been issued in Paris. Supposing 
that this was done without the knowledge of the editor, 
Honore hastened to inform him of the injury to their 
mutual interests. He then discovered that the editor 
himself, believing no doubt that he acted within his 
rights, was directing the publication in Russia. My 
brother objected ; the editor became angry, and would 
not listen to any amicable arrangement. Honore then 



232 Honore de Balzac. 

told him that he should take the case to the courts 
and ask for a legal decision on the rights of authors. 
He would not allow such a wrong to pass, for it might 
be made a precedent in future years as much to the 
injury of his brother-writers as to his own. 

To bring such a suit as this was daring a great deal ; 
for whether won or lost it was certain to have fatal con- 
sequences to Honore independently of the question of 
money, which was so important to him ; for no one 
could doubt that the " Revue" would close its columns 
to him and become his enemy. Such considerations, 
however, could not stop him, and he brought the suit. 
What was his amazement when his antagonist appeared 
in court armed with certificates of good repute and 
literary honor, signed by nearly all his brother writers, 
whose interests as well as his own he was endeavoring 
to defend at his personal risk and peril. Honore was 
deeply hurt at what he thought disloyalty. For a long 
time he divided his fellow-authors into two camps : 
those who had signed and those who refrained from 
signing. And when his anger was over the want of 
logical common-sense in the former still provoked him. 

His rights were evident, however ; he won the case, 
and with it a great many enemies. 

This lawsuit, together with the book entitled Illu- 
sions perdues, in which he has drawn a picture of the 
feuilletonists, exasperated the press against him ; and, 
so bitter are litera^ hatreds, even his death has not 
disarmed them all. He troubled himself very little 
about such attacks, and he often brought us the papers 
or periodicals in which the worst appeared, and read us 
the articles. 



Honore de Balzac. 233 

"Just see what a state of mind those fellows are 
in," he would say. " Fire away, my clear enemies, the 
armor is proof: it saves advertising; your praises 
would leave the public indifferent, but your insults will 
wake them up. Don't they howl ! If I were rich, 
people might say I paid them. However, we mustn't 
say a word; if they get the idea they are doing me 
good they are capable of holding their tongues." 

We thought otherwise, and the attacks troubled us. 

" How silly you are to take them to heart," he would 
say. "Can critics make my work good or bad? let 
time, the great umpire, show ; if these fellows are 
wrong the public will see it some day or other, and 
injustice then becomes a benefit to those it has in- 
jured. Besides, these guerillas of art hit true some- 
times ; and by correcting the faults the} T point out my 
work is improved, — in fact, I really owe them some 
gratitude." 

Therefore he would make neither remonstrance nor 
explanations. Once only he broke the rule of silence 
he had laid down for himself by writing the Mono- 
graphie de la presse. This work, sparkling with wit 
in eveiy line, was wrung from him by his friends ; they 
accused him of weakness, almost of cowardice ; he 
showed his claws to oblige them ; but he afterwards re- 
gretted the work, which wronged, he thought, his char- 
acter if not his talent. 

The fatal consequences of this struggle with the 
" Revue de Paris" are told in the following letter, 
written from the rue des Batailles, at Chaillot, where 
he lived after leaving the rue Cassini, and before he 
inhabited Les Jardies : — 



234 Honore de Balzac. 

." Your husband and Sophie came yesterday, and ate 
a horrible dinner in my bachelor's den at Chaillot ; it 
was the more unseemly because the kind brother had 
been running about all day on my account. 

" I have just concluded a good arrangement with the 
4 Estafette.' The other journals will come back to me 
some day ; they need me. Besides, have they taken 
my brain-fields from me, or my literary vineyards, or 
the woods of intellect? are there not other publishers 
to fall back on? Some publishers, not understanding 
their real interests (that is incredible to you, isn't it?), 
prefer books which have not appeared in a periodical. 
This is not the time to enlighten them ; though it is 
quite clear that a previous publication saves them the 
cost of advertising, and that the more a book is known 
the better it will sell. 

" Don't fret therefore ; there is no danger as yet in 
the domicile ; I am tired, it is true, even ill, but I have 
just accepted Monsieur de Margonne's invitation to 
spend two months at Sache, where I shall rest and take 
care of myself. I shall attempt something dramatic, 
while I finish JPere Goriot and correct La Recherche 
de VAbsolu. I shall begin with Marie Touchet ; it will 
make a strong piece in which I can bring strong char- 
acters on the stage. 

"I will not sit up so late; don't worry too much 
about that. Let us be just ; if troubles have given me 
a liver-complaint I have come honestly by it. But halt 
there, Mistress Death ; if } t ou do come, let it be to shift 
my burden, for I have not yet accomplished my task ! 
Don't therefore worry 3'ourself too much, Laure ; the 
sky will come blue again. 



Honors de Balzac. 235 

" The Medecin de Campagne is being reprinted ; it 
was out of print ; that 's nice, is n't it? 

"The widow Bechet 1 has been sublime; she has 
taken upon herself four thousand francs for proof cor- 
rections, which really belonged to me ; that 's nice, too, 
is n't it? 

" Rely upon it, if God grants me life, I shall have a 
noble place in the future, and we shall all be happy. 
Let us be merry, my good sister ; the house of Balzac 
shall triumph ! Shout it aloud with me, very loud, that 
Dame Fortune may hear us, and for God's sake don't 
fret." 

The letter which follows shows him in one of those 
moments of discouragement which no artists, however 
vigorous in mind they may be, can entirely escape. 

" I am so sad to-da} r that there must be some sym- 
pathetic cause for such sadness. Can it be that some 
one I love is suffering? Is my mother ill? Where is 
my good Surville? is he well, body and soul? Have 
you news of Henry, and is it good? You and your 
little ones, can it be that any of you are ill? Write me 
at once and ease my mind. 

" My dramatic attempts are doing badly. I shall 
give them up for the present. Historical drama re- 
quires great scenic effects, which I know nothing about, 
and which, perhaps, I could only find out in a theatre 
with intelligent actors. As for comedy, Moliere, whom 
I wish to follow, is a disheartening master ; it takes 
days upon days to attain to anything good of that 
kind, and time is always lacking to me. There are, 
1 His new publisher. 



236 Honor 4 de Balzac. 

besides, such innumerable difficulties to conquer before 
I can handle even one scene ; and I have not the time 
to give to tentatives. A masterpiece alone, together 
with my name, would open the doors of a theatre to me, 
and I have not attained to masterpieces. Not being will- 
ing to risk my reputation, I should have to find an inter- 
mediary — more time lost, and the worst of it all is I 
have not any time to lose. I regret giving up the stage ; 
dramatic work is more productive than books, and 
would sooner bring me out of m}' trials. But hardships 
and I took each other's measure long ago ; I have con- 
quered them in the past and I will conquer them again. 
If I succumb, it is because Heaven wills it, and not I. 

" The painful impression m}' distresses make upon 
you ought to prevent me from telling you of them ; but 
how can I help relieving ury over-full heart by pouring 
it out to yours? Yet it is wrong to do so. It takes a 
more robust organization than 30U women have to bear 
the tortures of a writer's life. 

" I work harder than I ought to, but how can I help 
it? When at work I forget my troubles, and it is that 
which saves me ; but 3*011, you forget nothing. There 
are persons who are offended by this faeultv, and they 
add to my sufferings by not comprehending me. 

" I ought to insure nrv life, to leave, in case of death, 
a little fortune to my mother. All debts paid can I meet 
the costs? I must see about this on my return. 

" The time during which the inspiration of coffee 
lasts is lessening. It now excites my brain for only 
fifteen days consecutively, — fatal excitement, too, for 
it gives me horrible pains in the stomach. That is the 
same time that Eossini assigns to its stimulus. 



Honor e de Balzac. 237 

"Laure, if I wear out eveiy one about me I shall not 
be surprised. An author's life is never otherwise ; but 
to-day I have the consciousness of what I am and what 
I shall be. What strength it needs to keep one's head 
sound when the heart suffers thus. To work night and 
da}^, and see myself constantly attacked when I need 
the tranquillity of a cloister to do my work ! When 
* shall I have that peace? Shall I ever have it for a 
single day? only in the grave, perhaps. They will do 
me justice there ; I like to think so. My best inspira- 
tions have ever come to me in moments of extreme an- 
guish ; they will shine upon me still — 

" I stop ; I am too sad ; heaven should have given a 
happier brother to so affectionate a sister. 

My brother was then overwhelmed by a great heart- 
sorrow. 1 I cannot publish any parts of his correspond- 
ence except that which relates to himself and his books, 
or shows him under the aspect of son and brother. 
These restrictions deprive the public of mairy interest- 
ing pages, especially those which he wrote me after the 
death of a person very dear to him. I have never read 
anything so eloquent as the expression of that grief. 

A friend allows me to print the following letters, by 
which the reader can judge of my brother in his friend- 
ships : — 

" My dear Dablin, 2 — Here is the corrected manu- 
script and the proof-sheets of the Chouans. As soon 

1 The death of Madame de Berny. 

2 Monsieur Theodore Dablin was a rich ironmonger of the rue 
Saint-Martin, who had the tastes of an artist and a generous 
heart. He was one of Balzac's most faithful friends, and often 
helped hjm in his early days with advice and also with means. 



238 Honore de Balzac. 

as I put my name to any of my compositions I des- 
tined this one for you. But the chances which rule the 
fate of books decreed that the Chouans should not be 
reprinted since 1834 until now, though mairy persons 
have thought the book better than its reputation. If I 
were of those who make their mark upon their epoch 
this dedication might be of value in future years ; but 
neither 3-011 nor I know the solution of that enigma. 
Therefore consider it only as a proof of the friendship 
which remains in my heart, though you have not culti- 
vated it for many years. Ever yours." 

The dedication of the Chouans reads thus : "To the 
first friend, the first work." 

" My dear Dablin, — Mr sister tells me that an ex- 
pression which escaped me has hurt your feelings. It 
would be knowing me veiy little to think me a half- 
friend. It is nearly eighteen 3-ears since that Easter 
da}' when, passing through the place Vendome between 
you and Monsieur P. le H., close to the column, I (be- 
ing then verj' young) felt and said what I could be 
some day. You said that honors and prosperity 
changed men's hearts. I answered that nothing could 
change mine in its affections. That is true ; I have 
been false to none ; to-day all those who have been my 
true friends are on a footing of a perfect equalit} 7 . If 
you saw more of me you would know this. I have re- 
mained very much of a child in spite of the reputation 
I have won ; only I have the selfishness of a hard 
worker. Sixteen hours a daj^ given to the construction 
of a great work, which will one day be gigantic, leaves 
me little time to dispose of. This deprivation of the 
pleasures of the heart is the heaviest tax I pay to the 



Honore de Balzac. 239 

future. As for the pleasures of the world and of life, 
art has killed them all without one regret from me. 

"I think that intellect and feeling make all men 
equal. Therefore, my friend, never again put into the 
singular what I say of the masses. I have been four 
times to your house to see you and you are off I don't 
know where. If I am unable to soothe }<our wounded 
heart in person, this letter will tell you how great my 
astonishment was when my sister told me I had hurt 
you. 

"Adieu; a long letter like this is a luxury to me. 
Heartfelt regards, and ever yours." 

My brother, going four times to find Monsieur Dablin, 
who lived at a great distance, to assure him that a 
rough remark which escaped him in a discussion was 
said without the slightest personal meaning, was cer- 
tainly not a lukewarm friend. 

The letter which follows was addressed to my friend 
Mme. Carraud, in answer to one from her on the Physi- 
ologie du Mariage, which incurred her displeasure. 

" The feeling of repulsion which you had on reading 
the first pages of the book I sent you, is too honorable 
and too delicate for any mind, even that of the author, 
to be offended by it. It proves that you do not belong 
to a world of duplicity and treachery, that you know 
nothing of a social existence which blasts all things, 
and that you are worthy of a solitude where man is 
ever great and noble and pure. It is perhaps unfortu- 
nate for the author that you did not overcome that first 
feeling which naturally seizes an innocent heart at the 



240 Honor e de Balzac. 

hearing of a crime, the picturing of evil in the language 
of Juvenal, Rabelais, Persius, or an}- other satirist of 
the same kind. Had you done so I think 30U would 
have been reconciled to the book after reading certain 
strong lessons, certain vigorous pleas in behalf of wo- 
man's virtue. 

'- But I cannot blame 3-011 for a repugnance whfch 
does } T ou honor. How could I be hurt with 3'ou for be- 
longing to your sex? I therefore humbly ask your 
pardon for the involuntary offence, against which, if 
3*011 remember, I had warned you ; and I beg 30U to 
believe that the severe judgment 3'ou pronounce upon 
the book cannot alter the sincerity of the friendship 
3 t ou suffer me to feel for 3*ou. . . . 

"Forgive me, dear, nr\- jokes about the mone3 T 
earned by writing. The}* have shocked 3-ou ; but the}' 
were really as boyish as a great deal that I do and sa}\ 
Do 3'ou think mone3* reall}* compensates for nry work 
and health ? No, no ! If my imagination runs awa3 T 
with me sometimes, I soon come back to the noble and 
the true ; do believe that. 

"lam now writing for the ' Journal de l'Europe Lit- 
teraire/ where I have a note of five thousand francs to 
meet. At the time that journal came near failing liter- 
aiy men pledged themselves to help it. It is the last 
time I will involve myself in that wa3*. I ought not, in 
order to do good to some, to do wrong to others." 

M3* brother was serious in all his thoughts, and it 
must not be supposed (as many have imagined) that 
the learning and the science on which he touches from 
time to time in his books were lightl}* studied and then 



Honore de Balzac. 241 

forgotten. What he knew he did not know superfi- 
cially ; where he was ignorant he naively admitted his 
ignorance ;. and when he had to treat of certain subjects 
which he had not studied, he consulted those who spe- 
cially understood thern, and was careful to acknowledge 
openly the service they had rendered to him. There 
was pride, perhaps, in such acknowledgments. He was 
capable of thinking that nothing but lack of time kept 
him from knowing everything. 

His constant desire for mone3 T , which has been so 
often blamed, will be, I think, understood and justified 
by the circumstances I have related. He wanted money 
in the first place to pay his debts to all. He who craves 
it from such a motive deserves, surely, the respect of 
others. My brother, entering life through misfortunes, 
struggled bravely against the storm like the Portuguese 
poet, lifting high above the waves that threatened to 
engulf him the Work he expected should give him fame. 
Such circumstances still further magnify that work. 
It is therefore with a feeling of pride that I have here 
narrated his misfortunes. 

I find a letter of this period which refers to his work. 
It is dated from La Boulonniere, a little estate near 
Nemours, where he afterwards placed the scene of his 
Ursule Mirouet. 

" La Fleur des pots [subsequently called Le Contrat 
de mariage] is finished. I have succeeded, I think, in 
what I wished to do. The single scene of the signing 
of the marriage contract shows the future of the couple. 
You will find in it a touch which I think intensely comic ; 
the struggle between the young and the old notariat. I 
16 



242 Honore de Balzac. 

have managed to attract attention to a discussion of that 
act. This book is one of the chief scenes in the series" 
of private life ; later, I shall write the Inventaire apres 
deces, in which the horrible mingles with the comic. 
Appraisers ought to know a good deal about human 
turpitude ; I shall make them talk. . . . 

44 All you write about my purchase of. the bit of 
ground at Ville-d'Avray does not affect it. You don't 
seem to understand that that piece of real estate is an 
investment which represents what I owe to niy mother ; 
I have not the time to discuss it now ; but I will con- 
vince you when we meet." 

The attacks against my brother increased rather than 
lessened ; the critics, unable to repeat the same things 
forever, changed their batteries and accused him of im- 
morality. It was the best means in their power of doing 
him harm, and of alienating the public, who began to be 
alarmed and to manifest ill-will against the author of the 
Comedie Hamaine. His works were forbidden in Spain 
and in Italy, more especially in Rome. Immoralit}', 
which is easy to judge of in actions, is difficult to de- 
fine in works of art. Are not pictures of vice as instruc- 
tive on the stage or in books as pictures of virtue? 
What writer, unless it be Florian or Berquin, has escaped 
the charge of immorality from contemporary critics ? It 
is the resource of such critics when the} 7 have nothing 
to say on the literary value of works. Moliere was their 
target for his Tartufe, Richardson for his Lovelace, 
that brilliant and vicious man. What did the}' not say 
about the house to which Lovelace takes Clarissa? 
What outcries followed the Manon Lescaut of Provost ! 



Honore de Balzac. 243 

These accusations were very injurious to my brother ; 
the\ 7 grieved him deeply, and sometimes they disheart- 
ened him. 

"Those men persist in ignoring the ensemble of my 
work in order that they may pick the details to pieces,'' 
he said. " My blushing critics veil their faces before 
certain personages in the Comedie Humaine, who are, 
unfortunately, as true as the others and set in strong 
relief in my vast picture the morals of the present day. 
There are vices in our time as there were in former times. 
Do they wish, in behalf of innocence, that I should vow 
to purity all the two or three thousand personages who 
figure in the Comedie Humainef I should like to see 
them in action! I didn't invent the Marneffes, male 
and female, the Hulots, the Philippe Brideaus whom 
everybody elbows in our worn-out civilization. I write 
for men, and not for } T oung girls. But I defy them to 
cite a single page in which religion or the family is at- 
tacked. Such injustice revolts the soul and saddens the 
heart ! What tortures success is made of! " he added, 
dropping his head in his hands. " But after all, why 
complain ? " 

Is it not, in truth, a condition of superiority that such 
minds shall be tortured? Is not their crown too often 
of thorns, which the vulgar acclaim ironically, denying 
their kingship until the day when death gives them im- 
mortality ? My brother has said somewhere in his works 
that " Death is the consecration of genius." 

It is right, however, to say that if Balzac was often 
wounded by those who wilfully misrepresented his ideas 
and his character, and also by those who really did not 
comprehend him, he sometimes met with triumphs which 



244 Honore de Balzac. 

avenged him for injustice. One onty of these triumphs 
can I relate here. 

One evening, in Vienna, he was entering a concert- 
room when the whole audience rose to salute the author 
of the Comedie Humaine. As he passed through the 
crowd on Ins way out, a young man seized his hand 
and put it to his lips, saving: "I kiss the hand that 
wrote Seraphita ! " 

"There was such enthusiasm and conviction in that 
young face," Honore said to me, " that the sincerity of 
this homage went to my heart; the}' may den} T my 
talent if they choose, but the memoiy of that student 
will always comfort me." 

The man is doubtless still living ; should these words 
meet his eye he will perhaps be glad to know that he 
gave a jo} T to the great writer, a joy which he gar- 
nered in his memory. 

The letters which I have given will enable the public to 
judge of the ardor of his mind and the warmth of a heart 
that no disappointments ever chilled. To read his cor- 
respondence makes one giddy ; how labors, hopes, and 
projects succeed each other ! what activhy of mind ! 
what courage, reborn incessantly ! what riches of or- 
ganization ! If sorrows of the heart (which were not 
lacking to him) or weariness of mind and body caused 
some discouragements now and then, how he conquered 
them, recovering immediately his robust energy, and that 
strength for work which never failed him ! 

The Balzac of societj- was no longer the man who 
had poured out his troubles to his family in his talk 
and letters. In the world he was amiable, brilliant, 
and knew so well how to conceal his cares that he 



Honore de Balzac. 245 

passed for the equal of the prosperous ; conscious of 
his own intellect he willingly took precedence of others. 
His poverty he proudly concealed, because he did not 
wish for pity ; had he felt himself freer in action, more 
independent of other men, he would proudly have 
avowed it. It was through misfortune that Balzac 
came to have his knowledge of social life. Guided by 
the genius of observation he roamed the valleys and 
the heights of the social state ; studied, like Lavater, 
on the faces about bim the stigmata which express to 
the eye all passions and all vices ; collected his t3 T pes 
in the human bazaar like an antiquary ; chose his curi- 
osities, evoked his types in places where they were use- 
ful to him ; placing them on the first or the second 
plane according to their value ; distributing light and 
shade with the magic of a great artist who knows the 
power of contrasts, — in short, he imprinted on each of 
his creations the names, features, ideas, language, and 
character that belong to them, and which give them 
such individuality that amid that teeming crowd not 
one is confounded with another. 

He had a singular theory about names ; declaring 
that invented names did not give life to imaginary 
beings, whereas those that were actually borne endowed 
them with vitalit}\ He found those that he took for 
the personages in the Comedie Humaine wherever he 
walked, and he would come home radiant when he had 
made some good capture of this kind. 

" l Matifat ! ' ' Cardot ! ' what delightful names ! " he 
said to me. " I found ' Matifat ' rue de la Perle, in the 
Marais. I see my Matifat ! he '11 have the wan face of 
a cat, and a little corpulence ; because a Matifat can't 



246 Honor e de Balzac. 

have anything stupendous, 3-011 know. And Cardot? 
that 's another matter — he is a little bit of a man, dry 
as a pebble, lively and jovial." 

I can quite comprehend his joy in finding the name of 
Marcas ; but I suspect him of inventing the " Z." 

Knowing the fidelity of certain of his portraits drawn 
from nature, — for if he took their names from the liv- 
ing he also took their characters, — we were sometimes 
frightened by the likenesses, and dreaded the fresh 
enmities we feared he would excite. 

"How silly you are!" he would say, laughing and 
shrugging those strong shoulders which did truly bear 
a world. " Do people know themselves? Are there 
any mirrors that reflect the moral being? If a Van 
Dyke like myself painted me I should probably bow to 
myself as if to a stranger." 

Sometimes he audaciously read his types to those 
who had posed for them. His audience would highly 
approve, and while we were looking on, full of anxiety, 
and thinking that they could not fail to recognize their 
portrait, they would say: " How true those characters 

are ; you must have known Monsieur , or Monsieur 

Such-a-one ; that's the very image of them, an actual 
portrait ! " 

Side by side with those who were unable to recognize 
themselves were others absolutely convinced that cer- 
tain characters in the Comedie Humaine were theirs. 
How many women have believed that they inspired his 
Henriette ! My brother never drew any of these dear 
deceived ones from the pleasant error which made them 
so ardent in his defence. Let this silence be forgiven 
him, for he had need of such devotion. 



Honore de Balzac. 247 

No author ever made his plans and combinations so 
far beforehand, or ever bore them longer in his brain 
before writing them. He has carried to the grave 
more than one book fully formed, which he reserved for 
the days of the maturity of his talent, startled himself 
at the vast horizons it opened before him. 

" I have not yet reached the point of perfection 
necessary to touch those great subjects," he said. 

The Essai sur les forces humaines, the Pathologie 
de la vie sociale, the Histoire des Corps Miseignants, 
and the Monographic de la Vertu, were the titles of 
some of these books, the pages of which, alas ! remain 
forever blank. 

Those who know literary art, and who study the 
works of Balzac, no longer accuse him, as they once 
did, of following mere chance or some aimless purpose. 
He did occasionally, in obedience to certain necessities 
of execution, change a few details, but never the plan 
of a book, alwa} T s laid down long in advance. No 
writer ever chained down so rigidly to the rules of work 
that prodigious fertile and facility with which nature 
had endowed him. 

"One should distrust those gifts." he said; u they 
sometimes lead to sterile superabundance. Boileau 
was right ; we must continually prune the style, which 
alone gives permanence to a work." 

The love he had for perfection, and his deep respect 
for his own talent, and for the public, led him to work 
too much over his style. Excepting a few books writ- 
ten under so happy an inspiration that he scarcely 
retouched them (such as La Messc de VAthee, La Gren- 
adiere, Le Message, La Femme Abandonnee), it was 



248 HonorS de Balzac. 

onl} T after correcting successively eleven or twelve 
proofs of the same sheet that he gave the " order to 
print," impatiently awaited by the poor compositors, so 
wearied try his corrections that they could each do only 
one page at a time of his writings. While he was thus 
requiring so mairy proofs of one sheet, and reducing by 
a great deal his own profits (for publishers would no 
longer bear the cost of his corrections) he was accused 
by his traducers of a mercantile spirit in the printing of 
his books. The compositors who printed them must 
have laughed if they heard this. When injustice be- 
comes grotesque there is nothing else to do ; and at- 
tacks of this kind did not trouble my brother. What 
annoyed him far more was to hear those who did not 
understand his work pretend to praise it. 

His least labored books — those which won for him 
earty in his career the title of the " most prolific of 
our novelists " — were those which gave him his reputa- 
tion. Sheltered by that humble title, which did not 
imply any great superiority and excited no jealousy, he 
was able to print his more serious works, for which, 
without this reputation, he might not have succeeded in 
getting a publisher. He did not like men to judge him 
only by those novels and tales the horizons of which 
were limited. To many persons, specially those of 
academic tastes, Balzac was only " the father of Eugenie 
Grandet." That was as far as such persons went with 
him, and beyond that they allowed him neither capacity 
nor fame. I do not feel to that book as my brother 
did ; and I do not approve of diminishing the merits of 
such a literary gem, which has been justly compared 
to a painting of Mieris, or Gerard Dow ; but I do think 



Honore de Balzac. 249 

that many of his books surpass it in mental depth, 
if they cannot surpass it in truth and in finish of 
execution. 

The title " most prolific of our novelists," which was 
useful to him in the beginning, was injurious in some 
respects, and especially in this, that Balzac remained 
unknown to men of serious minds, who thought this 
prolific writer unworthy to occupy even their leisure 
hours ; while, on the other hand, more frivolous per- 
sons, who fed upon novels exclusive!}', skipped as wear- 
isome or digressive, the serious parts of his books, for 
which the fictitious parts were often only the setting ; 
consequently, many of those who read the Comedie 
Humaine knew no more about it than those who never 
read it at all. 

Thus it was that Balzac did not at first obtain the 
place to which he has a right on the book-shelves of 
thinkers, beside Rabelais and Shakspeare and Moliere, 
through his glorious relationship to those great spirits. 

Friends and relatives who followed Balzac from the 
cradle to the grave can say confidently that this man, 
so clear-sighted, so lucid in thought, was confiding and 
simple as a child in his amusements, sweet-tempered 
and gentle even in his darkest da} T s of discouragement, 
and so amiable in his home that life was good beside 
him. The man who wrote the Cure, de Village, Les 
Parents pauvres, and Les Pay sans was like a school- 
boy in the holida} T s when he took his recreation. He 
sowed his morning glories along the garden wall at 
Passy, watched for their blooming in the morning, ad- 
mired their colors ; went into raptures over the jew- 
elled armor of some insect; rushed through the Bois 



250 Honore de Balzac. 

de Boulogne to Suresnes (where we were then living) 
to play a game of boston with his family, among whom 
he was more of a child than his nieces ; laughed at 
puns, envied the lucky being who had the "gift" of 
making them, tried to do so himself, and failed, saying 
regretfully, " No, that does n't make a pun." He used 
to cite with satisfaction the only two he had ever made, 
" and not much of a success either," he avowed in all 
humility, " for I didn't know I was making them" (we 
even suspected him of embellishing them afterwards). 
JProverbes retournes, which at one time were much the 
fashion in the studios, occupied him much ; he was 
luckier with them than with the puns ; he composed 
several for his favorite Mistigris (Debut dans la Vie) 
and for Madame Cremiere in Ursule Mirouet. " A 
wife should be the working caterpillar of the house- 
hold " gave him as much delight as his finest thoughts. 
"None of } T ou people would have thought of that! " 
he said to us. 

He composed mottoes for our lotteries, under which 
we hid the lots, and would rush in quite joyful when he 
thought he had some good ones. 

"An author is good for something," he said quite 
seriously. 

The music-master, Schmucke, and the banker, 
Nucingen, whom he made to speak German-French, 
amused him not less than his dear rapin Mistigris and 
Madame Cremiere. He laughed the tears into his e}-es 
when he read to us what he made them say in their 
terrible jargon. 

Much has been said, and not without reason, of his 
excessive self-satisfaction ; but it was so frank, and 



Honore de Balzac. 251 

withal so well justified, that those who knew him pre- 
ferred it to that false humility which often covers far 
more pride. How could we help forgiving self-satisfac- 
tion in the man who had put his name to the Medecin 
de Campagne, the Recherche de VAbsolu, the Cure du 
village, and so man} 7 other great works, when the con- 
viction of his talent could alone give him the patience 
and strength necessary for the creation of such works ? 
It would have been better, no doubt, had he repressed 
this naive enthusiasm for himself; but it would have 
been asking the impossible of a man of his frankness 
and vivacity of feeling. Moreover, we can see in his 
letters how swiftly doubts followed his greatest satis- 
factions ; and they were just as sincere as his self-con- 
ceit. At such times he would ask anxiously if we 
thought his works (which were shortening his days) 
would make him live longer than other men in the 
minds of his fellows. 

But it must not be supposed that his self-love was 
deaf and could not hear the truth. We might say 
to him plainly, " Such a thing is bad, in our opinion." 
He would begin by exclaiming, arguing, abusing us 
perhaps, and declaring that the particular part thought 
bad was precisely the best in the book. But if, in spite 
of his anger, we held firm and maintained our own 
opinion, this firmness made him reflect ; he had not lost 
a single one of our remarks and observations ; he 
weighed them and he judged them in the solitude of 
his toilsome nights, and he would come back in the 
morning to press the hands of the friends who cared for 
him enough to tell him the truth. 

" You were right," or, " You were wrong," he would 



252 Honore de Balzac. 

say with the same good faith, having as much gratitude 
in the one case as in the other. And it was such friends 
whom he really preferred, in spite of his self-conceit. 
He was the first to laugh at that conceit and to let 
others laugh, and he was moreover very clever in dis- 
covering the value of praise and was never duped by 
unmeaning flatteiy. He was simple and confiding, but 
he could not be a fool. 

He admired talent wherever he met it, — equally in his 
friends as in his enemies, and would defend both against 
all vulgar attacks which calumniated intellect. How 
man}* times he protected, without letting it be known, 
poor unknown authors whose first works chance had 
thrown in his way ; he would go himself to the editors 
of reviews and journals to say, "That man has a fu- 
ture." And his opinion carried weight. 

An incisive or picturesque phrase sufficed him to 
present a situation, or the future of a man; and it 
would be impossible to tell a story better than he, or to 
talk or read better. In fact, it would not do to let him 
read his books to you if 30U wished to judge of the 
weak spots ; he could have made an audience admire 
the verses of Trissotin. 

The egotism for which he has been blamed grew out 
of his miserable situation and his hard labor. Freed 
from such pressure he was capable of being helpful to 
others and devoted ; witness the friendships which he 
retained to the end of his life ; and certain young liter- 
ar} T aspirants could testify that he gave them, more than 
once, advice and time, his onty property. But he who 
sacrifices his life to live in the future has the right to 
withdraw from the demands of society, from all those 



Honore de Balzac. 253 

little duties which are the life of men of leisure ; and 
because my brother did so withdraw, he does not de- 
serve to be accused of indifference. The letters which . 
I have cited are a reply to this reproach of selfishness, 
and will enable the reader to judge of his heart. But 
more than this, ho possessed the art of making himself 
so beloved that in his presence all grievances which, 
rightly or wrongly, persons had against hiin were forgot- 
ten, and nothing remained but the affection they felt for 
him. The servants who waited on him have never for- 
gotten him, and yet he was unable to do for them as he 
wished. From the poor old woman of whom he speaks 
in Facino Cane (she had taken the place of the " un- 
intelligent Myself") — who went every morning to the 
rue Lesdiguieres from the far-off purlieus of the fau- 
bourg Saint-Antoine, and who used to go and see him 
wherever he lived afterwards — to Francois, the old 
soldier, who was one of his last retainers, all loved him 
devotedly ; and God knows they had neither leisure 
nor plenty when they lived with him. 

" I don't know what it is about him, but I'd serve 
him for nothing," I have heard one of them saj r . " You 
don't feel tired or sleepy if he wants you, and if he 
scolds you in return, it is all right." 

As for his friendships, it is quite true, as he wrote to 
Monsieur Dablin, that he betrayed none and kept them 
all. Intimate with many of the most remarkable per- 
sons of his time, they all took pride in his affection and 
returned it in kind. More than once he left his work 
to sta} r with a sick friend ; with him such claims of the 
heart took precedence of all others. The allurement he 
felt to the friends he loved was so great that often when 



254 Honore de Balzac, 

he went to see them for a moment he stayed hours ; 
then came remorse and admonitions : — 

" Monster ! wretch ! \o\i ought to have been making 
cop3 T instead of talking ! " and more time was lost in 
adding up the number of hours which such pleasures 
had cost hirn, — an exorbitant sum, which, beginning 
with reasonable figures, attained to the fabulous. u For 
we must reckon the reprints," he said. 

To sum up all, this great spirit had the graces and 
the charm of those who shine by amiabilit\ T alone. His 
happy and kindlj- gayety gave him that serenity of soul 
which he needed to continue his work ; but foolish 
indeed are those who pretend to judge of Balzac in 
his hours of exuberance ; the child-man once at work 
became the gravest and most profound of thinkers. 
George Sand, who knew my brother well, has spoken 
nobly of him, being mistaken on one point onty ; 
namely, the extreme sobriety which she attributes to 
him. His life was not that of an anchorite. Outside 
of his work, which took precedence of everything, he 
loved and enjoyed the pleasures of this world ; and I 
think he might have become the most conceited of men 
had he not also been the most prudent. He, so out- 
spoken in all that related to himself, never committed 
anj r indiscretions in his social relations, and faithfully 
guarded the secrets of others though he never was able 
to keep his own. 

I find in his letters the following appreciation of 
George Sand, whom he called his "brother George," 
doing homage, no doubt, to her virile genius : — 

"She has none of the littleness of soul nor any of 
those base jealousies which cloud so many contempo- 



Honore de Balzac. 255 

rary talents. Dumas is like her in that respect. George 
Sand is a very noble friend ; and I would consult her 
with perfect confidence in moments of doubt as to the 
logical course to take under such or such circumstances. 
But I think she lacks the critical sense, at any rate 
loses the first impulsion of it ; she allows herself to be 
too easily persuaded, does not hold firmly enough to 
her own opinions, or know how to contend against the 
arguments her adversary brings forward." 

My brother used to say, laughingly, in allusion to his 
want of height, that u great men were nearly always 
short ; probably because the head should be near the 
heart, so that the two powers which govern the organi- 
zation should work in harmonjV 

At home he was always to be seen in a large dressing- 
gown of white cashmere, lined with white silk, made like 
the habit of a monk, and fastened round the waist by 
a silk cord. On his head was the " Dantesque cap'' of 
black velvet, made for him by his mother, which he first 
took to wearing in his garret, and continued to wear 
for the rest of his life. According to the hours at which 
he went out, his dress was slovenly or ver} r neat. If he 
were met in the morning, wearied with twelve hours' 
hard work, and rushing to the printers with his hat over 
his eyes, his beautiful hands hidden in shabby gloves, his 
feet in shoes with high quarters, that were often outside 
the loose trousers pleated at the waist and held down 
with straps, he might have been confounded with the 
common herd. But if his brow were uncovered, if he 
looked at a passer-by or spoke to him, the most ordinary 
of men would remember him. His intellect, constant^ 
exercised, had developed to its highest degree a forehead 



256 Honore de Balzac. 

naturally vast, the receptacle of many lights ! That in- 
tellect showed itself also in his first words and even in his 
gestures. A painter might have studied on that mobile 
face the expression of all sentiments. — joy, pain, energy, 
discouragement, irony, hope, or disappointment, — all 
conditions of the soul were reflected there. 

He triumphed over the vulgarity which seems to be- 
long to corpulence by manners and gestures that were 
full of grace and natural distinction. His hair, the 
fashion of which he was fond of changing, was always 
artistic, no matter how he wore it. An immortal chisel 
has left his features to posterity. The bust which David 
made of m}- brother, then forty-four 3-ears of age, has 
faithfully reproduced his noble brow, and that fine hair 
(the sign of a physical vigor that equalled his moral 
vigor), the admirable setting of the eyes, the firm 
lines of his square nose, the mouth with its curved lips, 
where good-humor and satire met and mingled, and the 
chin which completed the pure oval of his face before 
obesity injured its harmony. But marble unhappily 
could not present those torches of the mind, those 
brown e} T es spangled with gold, like the e}*es of a 
Ivnx, — e3'es which questioned and answered without 
the help of words, which saw ideas and feelings, and 
threw out gleams that seemed to issue from an inward 
source which poured its ra3 r s upon the daylight instead 
of receiving any from it. 

Balzac's friends will recognize the truth of these 
words, which those who never knew him may think 
exaggerated. 

The time may come when I can finish this narrative 
of my brother's life with an account of his last years. 



Honor e de Balzac. 257 

If so, its details will be accompanied by letters which 
will show the change that experience so dearly bought 
had wrought in that vast intelligence. The Balzac of 
those years had outgrown his effusiveness, and had be- 
come prudent, serious,- even grave, but always without 
misanthropy. I may be able to tell of the last days of 
a life cut down in the vigor of his age and of his genius, 
before he had completed his work, just as he hoped for 
happiness and was about to enjo} r a tranquillity long- 
desired, — a grievous fate, which touched the hearts of 
friends and enemies alike. 

Immense successes, great affections, were the joys 
of his life ; he had also supreme afflictions ; nothing is 
diminutive in the soul of him whom God has endowed 
with exquisite sensibilities and a great mind. Who 
shall dare to pity or to envj T him? 

I have revealed his nature ; I have shown him in his 
private life, in his feelings for his family and friends. 
I have related misfortunes valiantly fought with, cour- 
ageously borne. I think I have fulfilled my task by 
making others respect and love the man in the writer 
whom they admire. Here ends my obligation to him 
and to all. Strong souls alone can judge him as an 
author. 



258 Honore de Balzac, 



CHAPTER IX. 

RETROSPECTIVE. 

It has been said that women are the ke3 T stone 
of Balzac's work. This is true ; but those who have 
said it show no conception of its real meaning ; and it 
will be instructive to see what they meant bj' what they 
said before calling Balzac himself to testify to the sense 
in which it is true. 

Sainte-Beuve and Jules Janin were the chief critics 
who in Balzac's lifetime attributed his success to women. 
In his review of La Recherche deV Absolu Sainte-Beuve 
says : — 

" In the first place and from the first, M. de Balzac 
has put in his interests one half of the public, and a 
very essential half to win. He has made it his up- 
holder by adroitly flattering certain fibres secretly known 
to him. ' Woman belongs to M. de Balzac,' says M. 
Jules Janin ; ' she is his, — in full toilette, in dishabille, 
in the most trifling particulars of her daily life. He 
dresses her and he undresses her. He is a milliner, 
or rather, he is a mantua-maker.' And, in truth, what 
splendid materials he deals in ; only they are the worse 
for wear ; spots of grease and oil are on them. M. de 
Balzac has introduced himself to the sex as a confidant, 
a consoler, a confessor with a touch of the doctor about 
him. He knows many things about their sentimental 



Honor e de Balzac. 259 

and their sensual secrets. Like a doctor he enters their 
bedroom and speaks in a whisper of mysterious details 
which confuse the modest. A friend of mine suggests 
that he has the secret arts and sleight of hand of the 
accoucheur or the magnetizer. Many women, even 
respectable ones, are taken in by this. . . . M. de Bal- 
zac has been fortunate enough to come forward at a 
moment when the imagination of woman has been 
greatly roused, since the emancipation of July, 1830, by 
the hopes and promises of Saint-Simonianism." 

After Balzac's death Sainte-Beuve added the follow- 
ing to his former opinion : — 

" Who has better painted the belles of the Empire? 
Above all, who has so delightfully sketched the duch- 
esses and viscountesses of the close of the Restoration? 
— those women of thirty who, having had their day, 
awaited their painter with vague anxiet}' ; so much so 
that when they met, he and they, an electric shock of 
recognition passed between them. . . . The theor}' of 
the woman of thirty, with all her advantages and her 
positive perfections, is a product of to-daj\ M. de Bal- 
zac has invented her ; she is one of his most real dis- 
coveries. The key of his immense success lies here. 
For this women have forgiven him much, and the}' take 
his word on all occasions because he has, this once, so 
well understood them." 

M. Taine, in his flux of words on Balzac, gives but 
little space or thought to his work on woman and thus 
dismisses it : — 

" The nature of woman is made up of nervous deli- 
cacy, refined and active imagination, native and ac- 
quired reserve. This is enough to say that it has almost 



260 Honor e de Balzac. 

always escaped Balzac's comprehension. . . . Wherever 
there is a deformity or a wound Balzac is there. And 
what are the promises of happiness and liberty that he 
offers? — money, carriage, an opera-box. . . . When 
Balzac tries to paint virtue, religion, or love, he is 
hampered by their sublimit}'. . . . His finest portraits 
of women are elsewhere, among the poor grotesque 
fools, pretentious, silly or nagging, spurred by the 
devil's claw which their fat libertine of a father, Balzac, 
never fails to stick into them. . . . AYherever there is a 
sore or a deformity Balzac is found in his quality as a 
physiologist." 

Among the critics of the present day Mr. Henry 
James says, in substance, that Balzac's women are 
made up of duplicity, — there are few human accom- 
plishments for which he expressed so explicit a respect. 
" Balzac is supposed to have understood the feminine 
organism as no one else had done before him ; to have 
had the feminine heart, feminine temperament, feminine 
nerves at his finger's ends ; to have turned the feminine 
puppet as it were inside out. ... It ma}' be said that 
women are the keystone of the Comedie Humaine / if 
they were taken out the whole fabric would collapse. . . . 
It seems to us that his superior handling of woman is 
both a truth and a fallacy. To begin with, he does not 
take that view of the sex that would commend him to 
the female sympathizers of the day. There is not a 
line in him that would not be received with hisses at 
any convention for giving woman the suffrage or admit- 
ting them to Harvard College. ... He takes the old- 
fashioned view of woman as the female of man, and in 
all respects his subordinate. . . . Her rnetier may be all 



Honore de Balzac. 261 

summed up as the art of titillating, in one way or other, 
the senses of man. Woman has a ' mission ' certainly, 
and this is it." 

Women themselves have had no voice in this judg- 
ment so far as the public are aware. It is not likely 
that many could be found to endorse the views just 
quoted, because, in the first place (and without touch- 
ing upon the question of Balzac at all) the tone of these 
remarks is contemptuous of womanhood. They belong 
to a period of ideas on which is written passagere. 

When we turn to Balzac himself for their refutation 
we find that we must go to his life as well as to his 
books, in order to discover the spirit of his mind towards 
woman. He was not, as a general thing, in the habit 
of enunciating principles ; he lived them and made his 
characters live and illustrate them. We may not find a 
confession of faith on this subject, but enough remains 
of his words and deeds to show plainty what was his 
own conception of woman and her relation to man, — 
what it was, and what it ought to be. 

If we look back to the earliest years when a senti- 
ment towards women could enter his soul, we find that 
nothing could exceed the ardor with which he longed to 
meet a woman-angel ; to him pure love was the coming 
together of two angelic natures ; and these thoughts 
kept him pure in heart and deed during his adolescent 
life. The mind that analyzed itself in Louis Lambert 
analyzed this particular belief and developed it in Se- 
raphita. In that book Balzac, while dealing with the 
theories of Swedenborg, went far beyond them in his 
perception of the one great truth on which the world 
should hinge were it not out of -joint. 



262 Honore de Balzac. 

He saw early that man is a dual being ; that man 
and woman are needed to express humanity. He saw 
also that the thread of the Divine which makes man in 
the image of God is transmitted through woman ; that 
she is the soul of humanit}*, regaining full intuition of 
God. Man is, in himself, not man but male ; unable 
to bring his powers to bear until he recognizes and ap- 
propriates Her as his soul ; through her alone he attains 
to manhood and is enabled to act. She is the trans- 
mitter of the Divine effluence, the inspirer ; he is the 
worker, the executor. It is not until her qualities of 
endurance, love, and intuition are added to his qualities 
of will, force, and intellect that he is a man at all, capa- 
ble of any hope or any ambition beyond the grovelling 
and passing life of his threescore 3'ears and ten. Re- 
ceiving this impulse from her, power is born in him, and 
he ultimates this power, this effluence, in acts. 

This is no new doctrine. It has existed through the 
ages ; for it is the essential truth of all things, and the 
world is out of joint because we have drifted so far 
away from it. Each soul is an epitome of it, for sex 
has only an earthly and limited meaning ; the human 
soul is man and woman both. Once recognized, and 
the function of woman admitted, "there is no height 
of goodness or knowledge to which she cannot raise the 
man ; if only he follows her lead and keeps her free 
from defilement by Matter and Sense, the direct traffic 
with which appertains to him. In order properly to 
fulfil her function in regard to man and attract his gaze 
upward, she must herself aspire continually to the Divine 
Spirit within her, the central sun of herself as she is 
that of the man ; and the clearness with which she dis- 



Honor e de Balzac. 263 

cerns and transmits the Divine Spirit depends upon her 
own purit}'. If, withdrawing her gaze from it, she fixes 
her eyes on things without and below, she falls, and in 
her fall takes him with her. On the other hand, as 
Soul and Intuition of Spirit, she leads him, physically 
and mentally, from dissipation and perdition in the 
outer and the material. She is the vehicle of the Di- 
vine Life ; the transmitter of virtue, which is courage, 
the one stable principle of human evolution." — " She 
is the spiritual element in humanity, lacking union with 
which man must be chained forever to the material, and 
waste his energies in struggles and labors which, even 
when most successful, only carry him farther from the 
true purpose of life, and render emancipation from car- 
nal conditions more tedious and difficult. Goethe, like 
Balzac, penetrated to the heart of the great problem in 
the last scene of the second part of Faust. His Ewig- 
Weibliche is the divine element which woman both 
embodies and typifies, and to the purifying and stimu- 
lating effluence from which Man is indebted for what- 
ever degree of enfranchisement from the clogging em- 
braces of materialism he is able to accomplish. This 
is the force which zieht tins hinan, which lifts us toward 
higher spheres and inspires us with nobler aims ; which 
on the physical plane keeps before our dull and earth- 
drawn eyes constant examples of self-sacrifice, altruism, 
patience, compassion, and love stronger than death ; 
which is most effective in subduing and extirpating the 
animal tendencies and inclinations from our nature, and 
in substituting impulses and aspirations which ma} r give 
us foothold in the path that leads to a life better worth 
living. In the figure of Seraphita we behold the final 



264 Honore de Balzac. 

efflorescence of such endeavor during which the domi- 
nant impulse has been uniformly spiritual, and through 
which the carnal elements have been gradually subdued 
until at length they suffice only to give the mortal form 
consistency, and to supply the physical means of that 
inevitable agony of temptation which is the price of 
translation to the Divine." * 

Much of the miseiy of the world, possibly all of it, is 
attributable to the ignorance or the rejection of this 
vital truth. The ghastly human miseries which come 
from what we call u unhapp} T marriages " are explicable 
when we consider that the world is practically ignorant 
of this law. All men are now educated to believe that 
power and the highest knowledge are vested in them ; 
all women are now educated to receive this as true. 
But mark what happens. A man and woman truly love 
each other and marry ; there is ever} r a-priori reason 
to suppose that a beautiful and solid life in common 
will be reared. It fails. Why? Because (1) the man 
unconsciously looks for this power from his wife, all 
the while consciously acting as if he were (as he has 
been taught he is) the source of power ; and because 
(2) the woman loyally tries to accept what she has 
been taught, namely, that he is the source of power and 
knowledge, when all the while she is learning (uncon- 
sciously) that he is not ; and because (3) she is seldom 
clear enough in her mind to think the truth out as it is, 

1 For a further understanding of this subject, which can be only 
briefly stated here, the reader is referred to the American transla- 
tion of Seraphita and to its introduction. 1 vol. Roberts Bros. : 
Boston, 1890. Also to "The Perfect Way ; or, The Finding of 
Christ. " 1 vol. Scribner and Welford : New York, 1882. 



Honor 4 de Balzac. 265 

and to recognize early enough her real mission, — which 
is (applying what has already been said) to transmit 
illumination and power to him and receive them back 
from him put into act and use. 

Balzac early perceived this truth. It must have 
come to such a thinker on the threshold of his inquisi- 
tion into human life. The task lay before him, imposed 
by the bent of his genius, to exhibit the world to itself 
under all its aspects, with a picture of its diseases, the 
secret of its distortions, and the possibility of a return 
to purity. "In seeing me," he sa}*s in his preface to 
the Comedie Humaine, " collect this mass of facts and 
paint them as they are, in their element of passionate 
emotion, some persons have imagined, very erroneously, 
that I belong to the school of materialists and sensual- 
ists. They are mistaken. I put no faith in any indefi- 
nite advancement of Society ; but I believe in the 
development and progress of the individual human be- 
ing. Those who find in me a disposition to look on 
man as a complete being are strangely deceived. Se- 
raphita is my answer to this accusation. In copying 
the whole of society, and in trying to seize its likeness 
from the midst of the seething struggle, it necessarily 
happens that more of evil than of good is shown. Thus 
some portion of the fresco representing a guilty group 
excites the cry of immorality, while the critics fail to 
point out a corresponding part which was intended to 
show a moral contrast. The day of impartial judgment 
has not yet dawned for me ; and I may add that the 
writer who cannot stand the fire of criticism is no more 
lit to start upon the career of authorship than a travel- 
ler is fit to undertake a journey if prepared only for 



266 Honore de Balzac. 

fine weather. I shall merely remark that, although the 
most scrupulous moralists have doubted whether Soci- 
ety' is able to show as much good as it shows evil, yet in 
the pictures that I have made of it the virtuous charac- 
ters outnumber the bad. Blameworth\- conduct, faults, 
crimes, have invariabfy received their punishment, hu- 
man or divine, evident or secret. In this I have done 
better than the historian, for I have been free to do so. 
Histoiy cannot, like the novel, hold up the law of a 
higher ideal. Histoiy is, or should be, a picture of the 
world as it has been ; the novel (to use a saying of 
Madame Necker) should paint a possible better 
world." 

And he goes on to give, with pathetic insistence, a 
list of the virtuous and irreproachable women who are 
to be found in his works. Reading that list of women, 
all strongly individual, nearly all powerful agents in the 
places assigned to them, we may well wonder that a 
critic could have found it in his mind to say that Bal- 
zac's view of woman's metier ma}' be summed up as the 
art of titillating in one way or another the senses of man. 
Here are the women in whom Balzac meant to typify 
the best of human nature, that which has a tendenc}^ to 
uplift and redeem the rest : Constance Birotteau, 
Eugenie Grandet, Ursule Mirouet, Pierrette Lorain, 
Marguerite Claes, La Fosseuse, Pauline de Villenoix, 
Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve Char- 
don, Mademoiselle d'Esgrignon, Renee de Maucombe, 
Madame Firmiani, and many others on the second 
plane. 

The true reason wiry women are and always have 
been friends to Balzac, whether as readers and stu- 



Honor e de Balzac. 267 

dents or in actual life, is because he has perceived and 
asserted their rightful place in humanity. He has 
endeavored to inspire them with a sense — through 
awful and revolting pictures, it is true — of the conse- 
quences of falling away from it. He preaches through 
facts, never didactically ; but women have seen, more or 
less consciously, his meaning, and, inspired b} T a hid- 
den sense within them, they have heard his call to 
bring about, "a possible better world." This is a 
reason which escapes male critics. But it would be 
quite untrue to assert that such critics are wrong when 
they say that the women of thirty or forty or any 
indefinite age are won by the extension which Balzac 
gives to their period of charm, and \>y the impor- 
tance which he assigns to their part in life. On the 
contrary, all that magnifies their influence and lifts it 
from the more material plane of youth and beauty, 
where so many of their perils lie, is justly welcome to 
women. 

The keynote of Balzac as a moralist is therefore his 
belief that woman is the Soul of man. He early saw 
the distortions in society caused b}- the ignoring of this 
truth, and we must take his word to Madame de Cas- 
tries and to Madame Carraud (alread}" quoted) that his 
object in writing the Physiologie du Mariage, in 1829, 
was to awaken ideas favorable to the emancipation 
and higher education of women and to insist on their 
natural and inalienable rights. The book is not suit- 
able for translation, — the same medicine not being 
suited to all constitutions. The Anglo-Saxon mind 
is shocked b} T a jeering or jesting moralism, which 
it calls cynicism. But, under any circumstances, the 



268 Honor e de Balzac. 

subject is not tolerable to the conventions of our day, 
which would rather not see truth, and when it sees it 
escapes it by calling it immoral. Tolstoi, when deal- 
ing with the same subject, conscientiously, in his out- 
wardly brutal and shocking manner, has been tabooed. 
The day has not come when it can be dealt w T ith ; but 
whosoever shall hereafter deliver a message upon it 
which shall reach the universal heart and conscience 
will do a deed for women in which Balzac intended to 
do, and has done, his part. 

At what particular period in his youth these beliefs 
as to the true nature of woman's influence came to 
him, it is impossible to say, all records of that period 
having been destroyed. Whether they were the out- 
come of the lad's own mind, trained by the meditations 
at Vendome and b} T the noble virginity of the senses of 
which he speaks in Louis Lambert, or whether Balzac 
w r as led to this study by a need to understand how and 
wiry it was that he derived his own force from a woman, 
cannot now be told. We know that he placed before 
his mind mairy questions derived from the phenomena 
of his own experience, and there are facts which justify 
us in thinking that he did so now. Very 7 early in life, not 
later probably than his twenty-third or twenty-fourth 
year, he met the woman-angel for whom he longed, and 
who, thenceforth, inspired his life until some great 
catastrophe overtook their love. All traces of her 
name and personality are lost, no doubt destroyed ; 
all letters and records of the period during which she 
influenced him are missing. Such veils should not 
be vulgarly pushed aside ; happily the} T cannot be in 
the present instance ; whatever is said must perforce 






HonorS de Balzac. 269 

have the reserve and delicacy with which Balzac him- 
self shrouded his feelings. A few scattered signs alone 
remain to tell of what he passed through, but they are 
full of significance ; and a strong retrospective light is 
thrown upon his mental condition during those 3'ears 
by his letters to Madame Hanska, the love of his later 
life — for Love, like histor} 7 , repeats itself. 

The most distinct mention of this early love is that 
b} r Theophile Gautier (alread}^ quoted). Once onlr did 
Balzac make allusion to it, and even then he could say 
no more than the first name of her whose memory so 
affected him that after man}' }'ears his e3 r es still filled 
with tears. That this love was the influence by which 
his early life was shaped, that from this woman he 
derived his force and his ambition, and that their 
mutual love ended in some great sorrow, no one who 
studies Balzac's life can doubt. To judge of it we 
must put ourselves in his place ; we must comprehend 
the force of his imagination and the excessive sensi- 
bility of his spirit. Later, twenty years later, when 
the thought that he might possibly lose Madame 
Hanska comes over him, he says: " If the hope of 
my life were to fail me, if I lost you, I should not kill m 
myself, I should not make mj'self a priest, — for the 
thought of you would give me strength to endure my 
life ; but I would go to some unknown corner of 
France, in the PjTenees or the Ariege, and slowly die, 
doing and knowing nothing more in this world." 

These words throw a vivid light on the anguish of 
his mind in earlier } T ears. 

He makes a few allusions to this cherished woman 
in his letters. Speaking of Pauline in the Peau de 



270 Honor e de Balzac. 

Chagrin he says : "For me she exists, only more 
beautiful ; if I have made her into a vision it is that 
no one may be master of my secret." And again, 
writing to Madame d'Abrantes in 1828, he says : 
"I have always been crushed beneath a terrible 
weight. I am sometimes surprised that I have nothing 
now to struggle against except outward misfortune. 
You may question all those about me and you will 
never obtain any light on the nature of my sorrows. 
There are those who die and the physician himself is 
unable to sa}' what malady has carried them off." 
Madame Surville alludes in her narrative to some 
" great mental shock " in early youth, as the origin of 
his heart-disease ; and he saj's himself, when writing 
to his sister in the last year of his life from Ma- 
dame Hanska's home in the Ukraine, and telling her 
of the progress of his illness : " These terrible suffoca- 
tions attack me when distressed, or when I feel an 
emotion too ardently. My life ought, for my health's 
sake, to be rose-colored. The origin of this disease 
was the cruelty of that lady whom you know of." 

Theophile Gautier points to Albert Savarus as the 
secret history of this love ; and he is doubtless right. 
Possibly he may have had some private means of judg- 
ing ; the tone of his remark implies as much. Albert 
Savarus is the story of a man's first love for woman, 
his inspirer, the source from whom he derives his power 
of action. That this unnamed woman's influence was 
such to Balzac, and that for years he was Vambitieux 
par amour — ambitious through love — cannot be 
doubted. No man could have made the fight that he 
did, against such odds from within and from without, 



Honore de Balzac. 271 

from purely personal views of self-development. He 
must have had some motive power upon him ; and if 
Theophile Gautier is right we may find its nature in 
that remarkable book. What the end was of this great 
love (which bore fruit in so many of his greatest books) 
will probably never be known. That it was disastrous 
is certain. If it did not follow the lines laid down in 
the stoiy the catastrophe was the same. There is much 
in his life that connects itself with this, — his seclusion, 
his craving for solitude, the Trappist robe he wore, the 
instinctive turning of his soul to Nature as the great 
consoler. 

One quality has been attributed to Balzac which 
cannot be passed over in silence, all the more because 
it is especially allied to this early phase of his life. We 
have already seen how those who knew him most inti- 
mately applied the word " chaste " to his nature. The- 
ophile Gautier sa} T s (from actual discussion with him) 
that in his opinion real chastity developed to the highest 
degree the powers of the mind and gave to those who 
practised it mysterious faculties ; and Gautier further 
adds that in the opinion of Balzac's most intimate friends 
he practised the chastit\ T he recommended to others. 
Without making an} T assertions on this point, as to 
which during his middle life there is no evidence either 
wa} T , it is right to call attention to this opinion of his 
intimate associates, men who would certainly not have 
made the same claim for themselves, nor, perhaps, have 
desired to do so. It is well to remember that this was 
the impression his nature made upon them ; in spite, 
too, of his jovial gayety and free speech. We may add, 
as a matter both of fact and of suggestion, that this 



272 HonorS de Balzac. 

characteristic of chastity, which was not a negative 
thing in a man of Balzac's temperament, but the result 
of his powerful will, was the secret of his ability to 
enter into the nature of woman and to apprehend her 
highest relation to man, — a relation not limited to earth, 
though rightfully bound by its conditions while this life 
lasts. An anecdote is told of him which illustrates this 
point and gives pleasure to the reader of it : — 

On some occasion when Balzac happened to be at 
Marseilles the young men of that town, under the lead- 
ership of Mery, gave him a banquet. An e}*e-witness 
relates that Balzac arrived punctually, holding in his 
hand a little snuff-box which he had bought of an anti- 
quary for three hundred francs on his way to the dinner. 
The descendants of the Phocian colony, feeling it in- 
cumbent on them to offer due homage to the great 
writer, the exponent of woman, turned the conversation 
upon the sex. Mery, the wittiest of men, was their 
mouthpiece. He made a brilliant speech, of a free na- 
ture, disrespectful to women. Balzac listened and said 
nothing ; he crumbled his bread and played with his 
snuff-box, with which he seemed much pleased. But 
when a pause came and he was evidently expected to 
take up the subject, he replied with such a warm de- 
fence of women, made with so much judgment and deli- 
cac} T that' Mery was completely abashed ; and the memory 
of that banquet and of Balzac's defence of womanhood 
long survived in the memoiy of those present. 

In the midst of the heav\ T troubles of all kinds which 
beset Balzac at the opening of his career he had the 
good fortune to find encouragement, advice, and sym- 
pathy in the friendship of several women of rare 



HonorS de Balzac. 273 

distinction of mind and character. First, and para- 
mount among them, was Madame de Bern}', whose 
early death withdrew her, only too soon, from the ten- 
der gratitude of her young friend. She was, undoubt- 
edly, the confidant of his early sorrow, and his chief 
support and means of consolation under it. The de- 
struction, or concealment, of their correspondence was 
owing to the fact that it concerned those circumstances 
of his life which he desired to keep secret. In his other 
letters he makes man}' allusions to Mme. de Bern}', 
which show his ardent gratitude and deep attachment 
to her. Those in his letters to Madame Carraud have 
already been quoted. To another friend he says, speak- 
ing of her death : "She whom I have lost was more 
than a mother, more than a friend, more than any crea- 
ture can be to another creature. I can explain her only 
as divinity. She sustained me under great sorrows by 
words, by actions, by devotion. If I still live it is 
through her. She has been all to me ; and though for 
the last two years illness and the lapse of time had 
separated us, yet we were plainly visible to each other 
from a' distance. She re-acted upon me ; she was, as 
it were, my moral sun. Madame de Mortsauf in the 
Lys is a pale expression of her noble qualities ; it is 
but a distant reflection of her, for I have a horror of 
prostituting my own emotions, and the world will never 
know the sorrows that overcome me." 

He mentions elsewhere that from the year 1821 she 
had never failed to give him daily two hours of her 
time, snatched from society, from her family, from her 
various duties, and from all the attractions of Parisian 
life. " Twelve years," he exclaims, "of a sublime de- 
18 



274 Honor e de Balzac. 

votion which saved me ! " Madame Surville has al- 
ready told us what he suffered at her death. In her 
narrative she withholds his letters on the subject ; but 
in one of them, which is included in the Correspon dance, 
there is this allusion to Madame de Bern}' : — 

"Les Jardies, 1839. 
"I am alone to face my troubles. Formerly I had 
one to help me conquer them, — the gentlest and most 
courageous being upon earth ; a woman who is reborn 
daily in my heart, and whose divine qualities make all 
other friendships pale by the side of hers. I have no 
longer an adviser on m}' literary difficulties, no longer a 
supporter in the difficulties of life. I have no other 
guide than the thought, ' What would she say if she 
were living?' Minds like hers are rare. The in- 
timacy which might have been so dear to me between 
you and me i's prevented hy your duties as wife and 
mother. There is only Madame Zulma [Carraud] 
among those in whom I can trust who has the intellect 
to play her part to me. Never was there a more re- 
markable mind smothered so completely as Madame 
Zulma's ; she will die unrecognized in her lonely 
corner. Madame Hanska could be everj 7 thing to me ; 
but I cannot be a burden on her fate ; and even if I 
could, I would not, unless she knew well what she was 
undertaking." 

The following extracts are from his letters to Ma- 
dame Hanska before her husband's death, and while his 
feelings for her did not exceed the limits of a warm 
friendship : — 



Honore de Balzac. 275 

" Paris, August, 1835. 1 
"You have been ill! you have suffered! and al- 
ways for and through others, — ever the same self- 
abnegation ! 

"If 3'ou only remain a short time in Vienna, how 
shall I send you Seraphita and Le Lys dans la Vdllee ? 
Should you decide to return home at once, give me your 
exact address. In a country so barren of resources as 
yours and in the depths of the desert you are about to 
inhabit perhaps my letters may be more welcome than 
amid the gayeties }'ou are now enjoying, and which, I 
fear, they have sometimes interrupted too gloomil}*. 
May 3'ou never know the bitter sadness that comes of 
deception, which the sense of loneliness increases ; and 
this at the very moment when we may happen to need 
the special support of friends. I must own to } t ou that 
the cruel conviction is growing upon me that I cannot 
much longer bear up under m} r hard work. They talk 
of victims of war and epidemics ; but who thinks of the 
battlefields of art, science, literature, and of the mounds 
of dead and d}'ing slain by their efforts to succeed ? . . . 
" I am, perhaps, on the eve of beginning a political 
existence which may in time give me a certain influence, 
even if it does not lead to a high position. But it does 
not tempt me ; for I feel it to be outside of m} T tastes 
and m} r natural habits of mind and character. Certain 
persons powerful in will and influential in position — 
statesmen — have approached me on the subject, and 
two newspapers have sounded me. One of the latter 

1 This is the first letter to Mrae. Hanska which has been pre- 
served. Previous letters were burned by a fire which occurred in 
M. Hanski's house in Moscow. 



276 Honore de Balzac. 

has man}* subscribers, not in France only, but all over 
Europe. If these papers were united under an intelli- 
gent and capable editor, they could become a power. 
Two other journals would enter the association, and we 
should found a fifth. The end would be, sooner or later, 
the triumph of the party thej" represent. But what 
ought we to call that party ? ' That is the question/ 
Shall it be the party of men of intellect, or the party of 
Intelligence? . . . The scheme is a fine one ; but to put 
it into execution is another matter. So I merely listen, 
and make no reply to the flattering or the merely agree- 
able speeches addressed to me. 

"You ask me to tell you of nry daily life. That would 
be troubling you with many annoyances and vexations. 
I should have to tell you of an endless series of comings 
and goings to meet my payments and do m} T business 
honorably. Life in Paris involves a frightful waste of 
time ; and time is the material out of which life is made, 
so the}* sa}\ When I am not bending over my writing 
by the light of my candles, or lying exhausted on the 
sofa, I am rushing breathlessly about on business, sleep- 
ing little, eating little, — in short, like a Republican 
general fighting a campaign without bread or shoes. 
Solitude pleases me, however ; for I hate the social life 
of the world, which bruises the heart and belittles the 
mind. 

" Do not, I beg of you, make any comparison be- 
tween the friendship which 3-011 inspire and that which 
3'ou grant. Never allow 3-ourself to imagine that I have 
ceased to love you ; for though I may often be over- 
worked, as I am now, 3-et in 1113* hours of fatigue and 
despair, — hours when my energ3 T relaxes, and I sit in 



Honore de Balzac. 211 

my chair with pendent arras and sunken head, body 
weary and mind depressed, — the wings of memory 
still bear me to the cool green shades which refreshed 
my soul, to her who smiles to me afar off, who has 
nothing in her heart that is not pure and true, who in- 
spires me, reanimates me, and renews, if I imny say so, 
\)y the excitement of the soul, those powers to which 
others give the name of talent. You are all this to me, 
and you know it ; therefore never speak jestingly of my 
feelings, as you do sometimes." 

" Paris, October, 1836. 1 
"I am depressed, but not utterly cast down ; my 
courage remains to me. The feeling of desertion and 
the solitude in which I am left grieves me more than 
m} 7 other disasters. There is nothing selfish in me ; 
but I do need to tell my thoughts, my efforts, my feel- 
ings to a being who is not myself; otherwise I have no 
strength. I should care for no crown unless there were 
feet at which to lay the honors men might put upon my 
head. ... I have said a long and sad farewell to my 
lost years, — engulfed bej^ond recall ! The} 7 gave me 
neither complete happiness nor complete misery ; they 
kept me living, — frozen on one side, scorched on the 
other ; and now I am conscious that nothing holds me 
to life but a sense of duty. I entered on my present 
phase of life with the feeling that I should die exhausted 
with xnj work ; but I thought I should bear it better 
than I do. For the last month I have risen at midnight 
and gone to bed at six in the evening ; and I have 
forced myself down to the lowest amount of food that 

1 This letter was written after his lawsuit with Buloz, when so 
many of his literary associates deserted him. 



278 Honore de Balzac. 

will support me, so as not to weary my brain by diges- 
tion. Well, not only do I feel weaknesses which I could 
not describe to 3*011, but, with so much life driven to the 
brain, I experience strange things. Sometimes I lose 
the sense of vertically ; even in bed my head seems to 
fall to the right or left ; and when I rise I feel impelled 
by an enormous weight which is in my head. I under- 
stand how Pascal's absolute continence and vast men- 
tal labor made him see an ab3'ss surrounding him, so 
that he was obliged to sit between two chairs, one on 
each side of him. 

" I did not leave the rue Cassini without regret. I do 
not yet know whether I can keep a part of my furniture 
to which I am attached, or even my libraiy. I have 
made, in advance, every sacrifice of lesser pleasures 
and memories that I ma}' keep this one little joy of 
feeling that these things are still mine ; they would not 
count for much in satisfying the thirst of my creditors, 
but the} 7 would slake mine in that march across the 
sands of the desert on which I am about to start. 

" To show 3'ou how good my courage is, I must tell 
you that Les Secrets des Ruggieri was written in a 
single night; think of that when } r ou read it. La 
Vieille Fille was written in three. La Perle brisee, 
which ends IS Enfant Maudit, was done in a few 
hours of moral and physical anguish ; it was my 
Brienne, my Champaubert, my Montirail, in short, 
iny campaign of France ! But it was the same with 
La Hesse de VAthee and Facino Cane. I wrote the 
first fifty sheets of Les Illusions Perdues in three days 
at Sache. What kills me are the proof corrections. 
The first part of E Enfant Maudit cost me more pains 



Honore de Balzac. 279 

than many volumes. I wanted to bring that part up 
to the plane of La Perle brisee and make them a sort 
of little poem of melancholy with which no fault could 
be found. 

" This is the last plaint that I shall cast into your heart ; 
in nry confidences to you there is a certain selfishness 
which I must put an end to. When 3-011 are sad I will 
not aggravate your sadness, for I know that your 
sorrows aggravate mine. I know that the Christian 
martyrs smiled ; and I know, too, that if Guatimozin 
had been a Christian he would have consoled his min- 
ister, and not have answered, ' And I — am I on a bed 
of roses ? ' A fine sajing for an aboriginal ; but Christ 
has made us more considerate, if not better. 

" Well, adieu ; the day is dawning : nvv candles pale. 
For the last three hours I have been writing to you, 
line after line, hoping that in each you would hear the 
cry of a true feeling, deep, infinite as heaven, far above 
the pett} T and transitory vexations of this world, 
incapable of thinking that it can ever change. What 
would be the good of intellect if not to place a noble 
thing upon a rock above us, where nothing material, 
nothing earthly can ever touch it? 

" But this thought would lead me too far ; my proofs 
are waiting. I must plunge into the Augean stable 
of my style, and sweep out its faults." 

" Paris, January, 1838. 
" Now as to the business which, takes me to the 
Mediterranean ; l it is neither marriage, nor anything 
adventurous, nor foolish, nor light-minded, nor iin- 
1 His trip to Sardinia. 



280 Honori de Balzac. 

prudent. It is a serious and a scientific business, 
about which I can as yet tell you nothing, because I ara 
pledged to absolute secrecy. Whether it turns out 
well or ill, as I risk nothing but the journey, which 
will, in any case, be a pleasure and a change for me, 
I think I may embark on this enterprise without 
anxiety. 

" You ask me how it is that I who know so much (as 
you indulgently say), and can observe and penetrate 
all tilings, can also be so duped and deceived. Alas, 
would you respect me if I were never duped, if I were 
so prudent, so observing, that no deceptions ever 
happened to me? But, putting that view of the ques- 
tion aside, I will tell 3-011 the secret of this apparent 
contradiction. You can readily see that when a man 
becomes an accomplished whist-player and knows after 
the fifth card is played where all the others are, he 
should like to put science aside and watch how the 
game will go by the laws of chance? Just so, you dear 
and fervent Catholic, God knew that Eve would yield, 
but he let her alone to do so. Or, if you do not like 
that wa} T of explaining the matter, here is still another 
which may please you better. When, night and da} T , 
my strength and m} r faculties are strained to the utmost 
to invent, write, render, paint, recall ; when I take my 
flight slowly, painfully, often with wounded wing, 
across the mental spaces of literary creation, how can 
I be at the same time on the plane of material things ? 
When Napoleon was at Essling he was not in Spain. 
I do see plainly enough that persons are deceiving me, 
or that they are going to do so ; that such and such 
man has betrayed me, or will betray me and carry 



Honore de Balzac. 281 

awa}' a bit of my fleece ; but just at that moment, when 
I see it all clearly, I am compelled to go and fight else- 
where ; copy has to be delivered ; or some book will 
be spoiled unless I finish it. . . . 

" I have said for the last twelve }'ears what } r ou now 
say to me about Walter Scott. Beside him, Byron is 
nothing, or almost nothing. You are mistaken about 
the plot of * Kenilworth.' In the opinion of all makers 
of tales, and in mine, the plan of that work is the 
grandest, the most complete, the most wonderful of all. 
It is a masterpiece from that point of view, just as ' St. 
Ronan's Well ' is a masterpiece in detail and patient 
finish, the ' Chronicles of the Canongate ' in sentiment, 
' Ivanhoe ' (the first volume, be it said) for its historical 
quality, the ' Antiquar}^' for poetry, the 'Heart of Mid- 
Lothian ' for interest ; each of those books has its own 
particular interest, but genius shines over all. You 
are right, — Scott will live and grow after B}Ton is for- 
gotten ; but I speak of Byron read in translation ; the 
poet in the original must ever live, if onlv for his form 
and his impetuous force ; though BjTon's brain never 
had an}^ imprint on it except that of his own person- 
ality ; but the whole world posed before the creative 
genius of Scott and was there reflected. 

" It is very kind of Monsieur Hanski to imagine that 
women fall in love with authors. Tell him that I have, 
and have had, nothing to fear on that score. I am not 
only invulnerable but secure from attack. The English- 
woman of the times of Crebillon the younger is not the 
Englishwoman of to-da} T . 

" I do not read the newspapers ; 30U can easuy believe 
I have not the time ; therefore I am ignorant of what 



282 Honore de Balzac. 

you tell me of Jules Janin, who takes, I hear, an atti- 
tude of open hostility to rue personally and to my works. 
I am, as 30U know, indifferent to the blame as well as 
to the praise of those who are not the elect of in}' heart, 
above all to that of journalism, and, generally, to that of 
what is called " the public." ... To sum it all up let 
me say that whenever 3-011 hear that I have yielded in 
matters of principle, honor, and personal self-respect, 
do not believe it. 

" After idling a little for a month, — going two or three 
times to the Opera, and as often to La Belgiojoso and 
sometimes to La Visconti (speaking in the Italian 
fashion), — and having had enough, and too much, of that 
sort of thing, I am glad to be quit of it and to go back 
to my work of twelve and fifteen hours a day. When 
my house is built and I am fairly installed and have 
earned two or three thousand francs of my own, I 
have promised myself the reward of going to see you, 
not, as you sa}', for a week or two, but for two or three 
months. You shall work over my comedies and during 
that time Monsieur Hanski and I will be off to the In- 
dies, astride on those smokj 7 benches 3-ou tell me of. 

" The Princesse Belgiojoso is a woman wholty unlike 
all other women, — not attractive according to m}* ideas ; 
pale with Italian pallor, thin, with a touch of the vam- 
pire. She has the good fortune not to please me. 
With a good mind, she shows it too much ; she is al- 
ways trying for effect, and missing her end by pursuing 
it with visible care and effort. I first met her five } T ears 
ago at Gerard's. She came from Switzerland, where 
she had taken refuge. Since then she has recovered 
her great fortune, thanks to the influence of our Foreign 



Honore de Balzac. 283 

Office, and now lives in conformity with her position. 
Her house is on a good scale, and the talk one hears 
there is witty. I have gone two Saturdays and dined 
there once, that is all. . . . Skin-deep affections (les 
amities d'epiderme) do not suit me ; they weary me, 
and make me feel more keenly than ever the treasures 
contained in the hearts that shelter me. In this respect 
I am not a Frenchman in the lighter acceptation of the 
word." 

" Ajaccio, March 26, 1838. 

14 Dear Countess, — This date will show you that I 
am only twenty hours distant from Sardinia. When I 
tell you that my present enterprise is a desperate effort 
to put an end to my business troubles you will not be 
surprised by it. I only risk a month of my time and 
five hundred francs for the chance of a great fortune. 

"Monsieur Carraud decided me. I submitted certain 
scientific conjectures to him. As he is a very learned 
man, who does nothing, publishes nothing, and is laz\~, 
there was no obstruction to his opinion being given, as 
it was, in favor of my ideas. He says that whether I 
succeed or do not succeed, he respects the idea as most 
ingenious. There is no scientific problem he cannot 
explain if questioned. But the trouble is that these 
vast mathematical minds judge of life only by what it 
is ; they do not see the logical end of it ; and so they 
await death to be rid of life. This vegetable existence 
is the despair of Mme. Carraud, who is all soul and fire. 
She was utterty amazed when she heard Monsieur Car- 
raud propose to go with me, — he who will not leave 
the house to attend to his own affairs. However, the 
natural man returned to him and he gave up the project. 



284 Honore de Balzac. 

u Here I am, alone in Napoleon's native town. I have 
been to see the house where he was born ; it is a poor 
hovel. I have rectified a few mistakes. His father was 
a rather rich land-owner, and not a mere clerk, as sev- 
eral tying biographers have said. Also, when he 
reached Ajaccio on his wa} T back from Egypt, instead 
of being received with acclamations, as the historians 
aver, a price was put on his head. They showed me 
the little beach where he landed. He owed his life 
to the courage and devotion of a peasant, who took 
him to the mountains and hid him in an inaccessible 
place. 

fc I am going to Sassari, the second capital of Sardinia, 
where I shall not stay long, as what I have to do there 
will take no time at all. The great question will be 
decided in Paris. All I need to do is to obtain a speci- 
men of the thing. You ma} T puzzle } T our head, most 
gracious and intelligent lad} T of the manor, but you will 
never find out what that means. 

" Corsica is one of the most magnificent countries in 
the world ; mountains like those of Switzerland, but no 
fine lakes. France does not make the most of this 
noble country. It is as large as several of our depart- 
ments, but does not 3ield as much as one of them ; it 
ought to have five million of inhabitants, and there are 
less than three hundred thousand. We are beginning 
to make roads and clear forests, which alone are wealth. 
As the soil is wholly unexplored there may be the finest 
mines in the world of metal, marble, and coal. Unhap- 
pily, the country is not only unexplored, but it is not 
studied, nor even known, on account of bandits and the 
savage state into which it has lapsed." 



Honor 6 de Balzac. 285 

" Alghteeo, Sabdinia, April 8. 
" I am here after five da} T s in a -coral row-boat on its 
way to Africa, — a good voyage, but I learned the priva- 
tions of mariners ; nothing to eat but the fish we caught, 
which the} T boiled into an execrable soup. I had to 
sleep on deck and be devoured by insects, which abound, 
the} T say, in Sardinia. . . . Africa begins here. Already 
I see a naked population, bronzed like Ethiopians." 

" Cagliari, April 17th. 
" I have crossed the whole of Sardinia, and seen 
things such as they tell us of the Hurons or the Polyne- 
sians. A desert kingdom, real savages, no husbandry ; 
long stretches of palm-trees and cactus, goats browsing 
on the undergrowth and keeping it down to the level of 
their heads. I have been seventeen to eighteen hours 
on horseback (I who have not mounted a horse for the 
last four years) without seeing a single dwelling. I 
went through a virgin forest lying on the neck of my 
horse in fear of my life, for I had to ride through a 
water-course arched over with branches and climbing 
plants which threatened to put out my eyes, break my 
teeth, and even wrench off my head. Gigantic oaks, 
cork-trees, laurel and heather thirty feet high. Nothing 
to eat. As soon as I reached the end of m} T expedition 
I had to think of returning ; so, without taking any rest 
I rode on to Sassari, where I found a diligence which 
brought me to this place. I passed through a region 
where the inhabitants make a horrible bread by pound- 
ing green acorns and mixing the flour with clay, — and 
this within sight of beautiful Italy ! Men and women 
go naked, with a bit of cloth to hide their nudit}\ No 



286 Honore de Balzac. 

habitation has a chimney ; they make their fires in the 
middle of their huts, which are full of soot. The women 
spend their time in pounding the acorns and making 
cla}' bread ; the men keep the goats and cattle. The 
soil is uncultivated in the richest spot on earth. And 
yet, in the midst of this utter and inexplicable miser}', 
there were villages where the costumes of the peasantry 
were of amazing richness ! 

"I have put off writing to Monsieur Hanski until I 
reach Milan and can give him some real news. I have 
thought of xou often on my adventurous trip, and I 
fancy I can hear Monsieur Hanski saying, ' What the 
devil is he doing in that galere f ' " 1 

" Milan, May 20, 1838. 

"Dear Countess, — You know all that that date 
says to me. To-day I begin the jear at the end of 
which I shall belong to the vast, unnumbered com- 
pany of the resigned. I swore to myself in the days 
of sorrow, struggle, and faith which made my youth so 
miserable that I would struggle no more against airy- 
thing whatsoever when I reached the age of fort} T . 
That terrible year has begun for me far from you, far 
from my own people, in bitter sadness which nothing 

1 It is unnecessary to repeat here in our limited space the story 
of his disappointment. Madame Surville has given it in her nar- 
rative with general correctness, but with one mistake. The dis- 
covery that the Genoese had obtained a grant to the mines followed 
immediately on Balzac's return from his journey, without the de- 
lay of a year, as his sister states. He had taken up the idea the 
previous year when at Genoa. His enthusiasm induced the Geno- 
ese to apply for the grant. When Balzac made his journey the 
following year he was then too late, as he discovered on landing 
at Genoa. 



Honore de Balzac. 287 

can dissipate ; for of myself I cannot change my fate, 
and I no longer believe that some fortunate event ma}' 
modify it. 

" I came here from Genoa on my way to France, and 
I have stayed on to do a work for which the inspiration 
has suddenly come to me after I had vainly implored it 
for several years. I have never read a book in which 
happy love, satisfied love, has been pictured. Rousseau 
used too much rhetoric ; Richardson preached too much ; 
the poets are too flowery, the novel-writers slaves to fact ; 
Petrarch thought too much of his imagery, his concetti, 
— he saw poetry better than he did women ; Pope over- 
did the grief of Helo'ise, — he wanted to make her better 
than nature, and the better, the}' say, is the enemy of 
the good. It may be that God, who created love with 
humanity, alone understands it. Certainly none of his 
creatures, as I think, have truly rendered the sorrows, 
imaginations, and poesies of that divine passion, which 
every one talks of, and so few have known. . . . 

" I have been sitting on a bench for nearly an hour 
with my eyes fixed on the Duomo, fascinated by the 
memories your letter brought to me. What unutterable 
sadness to be so near you in thought, so far in reality ! 
Ah, dear fraternal soul, the Duomo was glorious, sub- 
lime, to me in that hour of June ! I lived a lifetime 
beneath it. . . . 

" I went yesterday to see the Luini frescos at Sa- 
ronno, and they seem to me worthy of their fame. The 
one that represents the marriage of the Virgin has a 
peculiar charm about it ; the figures are angelic, and, 
what is rare in frescos, the tones are mellow and 
harmonious." 



288 Honore de Balzac. 

"Paris, June 10, 1838. 

" I crossed the Saint- Gothard, with fifteen feet of 
snow on the path I took ; the road was not distinguish- 
able even by the tall stone posts which mark it. The 
bridges across the mountain-torrents were no more vis- 
ible than the torrents themselves. 1 came near losing 
my life in spite of the eleven guides who were with me. 
We crossed the summit at one o'clock in the morning 
by a sublime moonlight, and I saw the sunrise tinting 
the snows. A man must see that sight once in his life. 
I came down so rapidly that in half an hour I had passed 
from twenty- five degrees below freezing (which it was 
on the summit) to I don't know what degree of heat in 
the Vallee de la Reuss. After the horrors of the Devil's 
bridge I crossed the Lake of the Four Cantons at four 
in the afternoon. It has been a splendid journey ; but 
I must do it again in summer, to see all those noble 
sights under a new aspect. . . . 

" Believe that I have perfect confidence in your 
literary judgment ; I have made you in that respect the 
successor of the friend whom I have lost. What 30U 
say to me becomes the subject of long and serious 
meditation ; and I now want your criticism on La 
Vieille Fille. Show neither pity nor indulgence ; go 
boldly at it. Should I not be most unwortlry of the 
friendship you deign to feel for me if in our intimate 
correspondence I allowed the pett} T vanity of an author 
to affect me ? . . .1 beg you to be concise in praise, 
and prolix in criticism. Wait for reflection ; do not 
write to me after the first reading. If } T ou knew how 
much instinct, or rather I should say critical genius, 
there is in what you write to me, you would be proud 



Honore de Balzac. 289 

of yourself, though you prefer to leave that sentiment 
to your friends. 

"Yes, — now don't defend yourself; don't make 
your familiar little gesture, and hide your eyes with 
those white and dimpled fingers ! — yes, our best con- 
temporaneous critics are not wiser than you. You 
make me reflect over my work so that I often remodel 
my ideas on what } t ou sa}\ You will believe this, for 30U 
know well that, though I am sincere in all things, I am 
especially sincere in art. I have none of that pater- 
nal foolishness which ties a band round the e3'es of so 
many authors ; and if La Vieille Fille has no merit, I 
shall have the courage to cut it out. 

" I have been home eight days, and I have made un- 
availing efforts to take up my work. My head refuses 
to do any intellectual work ; it is full of ideas, but none 
will come out. I am incapable of fixing m} T thoughts 
or of constraining m3 T mind to consider a subject under 
all its aspects, and so resolving on a course. I don't 
know when this imbecility will cease ; perhaps it is only 
the result of having lost my customary habits of work." 

" Les Jardies, July, 1838. 

" At present the house is not furnished, but it will be 
little by little. Just now I have an old cook of my 
mother's and her husband to wait on me. 

" I shall stay here till m} T fortune is made ; and I am 
already so pleased with the life that when I have earned 
the capital of my tranquillity I think I shall want to 
finish my days here in peace, bidding farewell, without 
flourish of trumpets, to all my hopes, aspirations, am- 
bitions, — in short, to everything. The life you lead 
19 



290 Honor e ole Balzac. 

— that life of country solitude — has great charms for 
me. I did want more because I had nothing at all, 
and once in the domain of illusions, it costs a young 
man nothing to wish for much. To-day my failure in 
success has wearied my character, — I do not sa}^ 
mj- heart, which will ever hope, under all circum- 
stances. . . . 

" I must tell you that I have been painfully struck by 
the extreme melancholy of your religious views. For 
some time past your letters have seemed to mean, 
4 Earth no longer interests me ; I have nothing more 
to do with it.' You do not know how many deductions, 
ill-founded perhaps, I draw from this. But, as you say 
it to me in all sincerity, 30U must be expressing what 3011 
feel ; if not, you would be false or distrustful, when 30U 
should be all truth with an old friend like me. Even if 
I displease you, I must sa} T in confidence that I am not 
satisfied, and that I should like to see you in another 
state of mind. To seek God in this way means re- 
nouncing the world ; and I cannot understand why you 
should renounce it when } t ou have so many ties to bind 
} t ou to it, and so man}' duties to fulfil. None but feeble 
or guilty souls can realty take such views." 

No letters to Madame Hanska appear in the Corre- 
spondance during the years 1839, 1840, 1841, and 
1842. 



Honore de Balzac. 291 



CHAPTER X. 



LAST YEARS. 



The last eight years of Balzac's life are contained in 
the histoiy of his intercourse with Madame Hanska. 
His health was already failing ; although this fact does 
not seem to have struck the minds of his friends and 
contemporaries. His robust and vigorous appearance 
and sunny disposition probably misled them ; but in 
his letters we may trace, unmistakably, that the springs 
of life were giving way. His own belief in the destruc- 
tive power of Thought and Will was never more exem- 
plified than in his own experience. This belief he has 
illustrated again and again in his books, and was 
now to illustrate in his life. The blade wore out the 
scabbard. 1 

Monsieur Hanski died in the winter of 1842-43, and 
in August and September of the latter year Balzac 
made his first visit to St. Petersburg, with the result, 
on his side, of an absorbing love which superseded all 
other thoughts and hopes in his mind ; and on Madame 
Hanska's side, of an evident affection and a desire for 

1 The reader is referred to the American translation of La Peau 
de Chagrin and its Introduction. Also to the Introduction to the 
Etudes Philosophiques, nominally by Felix Davin, really by Balzac 
himself; reprinted in de Lovenjoul's "Hist, des CEuvres de Bal- 
zac," page 194. 



292 HonorS de Balzac. 

his allegiance, tempered by a sense of other duties, 
— duties to her daughter and to her property, — which 
made her reluctant to consider the question of marriage. 
It was not until the}- were at Strasburg together in 
1846 that she pledged herself to him ; and his letters 
from 1843 to 1846 betray the injury her doubts and 
hesitations did to his mind, and probably to his health. 
Even after the promise had been made she could not 
be brought to fulfil it ; and it was only in 1849 that 
he felt any assurance that the marriage would take 
place. Some of the difficulties which Madame Hanska 
put forward were genuine ; others seem to have pro- 
ceeded from her reluctance to take the final step ; 
though it is quite evident that she never for a moment 
thought of relinquishing Balzac's devotion. 

Among the serious difficulties which beset the marriage 
was the difference of nationality'. It was necessary to 
obtain the Czar's permission, and this was long with- 
held. Monsieur Hanski had left his wife an immense 
landed propert} 7 and the guardianship of their daughter. 
Russian law is extremely rigid in its interpretation of 
such duties. Madame Hanska went to St. "Petersburg 
in the spring of 1843 for the legal settlement of her 
affairs, and she seems to have then become aware that 
marriage with a foreigner could not take place without 
the relinquishment of her whole fortune to her daughter. 
It is evident that she was a woman of deep natural 
affections and a devoted sense of duty ; no personal 
considerations of propert} T influenced her, — for in the 
end she relinquished her fortune, — but her first duty 
was, obviously, to her child, then a girl of fourteen ; 
and we cannot wonder that she refused to make so 



HonorS de Balzac. 293 

great a change in her own life until the life of her 
daughter was more developed. The wonder rather is 
that a woman in her position should have thought of 
such a marriage at all ; for Balzac could offer her noth- 
ing but a most unfortunate outward life, — crippled by 
debt. The fact that she loved him, and that her fam- 
\\y loved him and desired the marriage, and treated 
him with filial respect and affection, is strong testimony 
to the sort of man he was. His genius, heart, and prin- 
ciples seemed to them to outweigh all other considera- 
tions ; a testimony which does even more honor to their 
natures than to his. 

When Balzac left Madame Hanska at St. Petersburg, 
in September, 1843, she promised to meet him the 
following year at Dresden. The promise was broken ; 
but she made a short visit to Paris in the summer of 
1844. She did not go to Dresden till the beginning 
of 1845, and even then she put obstacles in the way 
of his joining her until April, when she sent for him. 
In the following September he again met her at Baden, 
and by that time the chief obstacle between them was 
in fair wa} T to be removed, — her daughter Anna being 
engaged to marry a 3'oung Polish nobleman, Comte 
Georges Mniszeck, the owner of a vast and very beauti- 
ful estate in Volhynia, which Balzac describes as an- 
other Versailles. 

The following winter Madame Hanska, her daughter, 
and the young count went to Italy, inviting Balzac to 
accompany them. He met them at Chalons, and to- 
gether they went to Naples, he himself returning to 
Paris in January, 1846, but rejoining them in Rome 
in March of that year. The young couple were married 



294 Honore de Balzac. 

during the summer, and Balzac was soon after summoned 
to join Madame Hanska at Wiesbaden. It was during 
a visit they paid at that time to Strasburg that she 
first pledged herself to marry him. Later, in the same 
year, he made her a flying visit of four da}'s at Wies- 
baden, which led his lively friend, Madame de Girardin, 
to call him " il vetturino per atnore," — for we must 
remember, difficult as it may be to do so, that in those 
da}*s railroads were not. 

During these years Balzac's life in Paris had passed 
through periods of great depression, when he felt him- 
self physically and mentally incapable of hard work ; 
although the necessity for it was even greater than 
ever ; for he now began, silently, and apparently tak- 
ing no one into his confidence, to prepare for this 
hoped-for marriage. Little by little, he collected his 
treasures of rare old furniture, pictures, and works of 
art of all kinds, and not long after Madame Hanska's 
pledge was given he bought and remodelled the little 
house in the rue Fortunee, of which Gautier has 
told us. 

From time to time during these years his natural 
vigor and his inspiration returned to him. He tells 
of this joyously, with all his former eagerness ; but, as 
a general thing, the reader feels that his wing is broken. 
Reference to the chronological list in the appendix to 
this volume will show the work he did during these 
3^ears, in the course of which he produced (among other 
less remarkable tales) three of his greatest books, and 
one of his noblest characters : Pes Paysans, the two 
volumes of Pes Parents Pauvres, and Madame de la 
Chanter ie. 



Honore de Balzac. 295 

In January, 1847, Madame Hanska came to Paris 
alone, — the young couple having gone to visit their 
estates in Poland. Certain allusions in Balzac's let- 
ters show that during this visit she identified herself 
with all his affairs, and approved of the home he was 
preparing for her. In fact, she was in part its pur- 
chaser, and joined with him in filling it with works of 
art. On her return to Poland in April, Balzac accom- 
panied her as far as Francfort, and in the following 
September he made his first visit to Wierzschovnia, 
her home in the Ukraine. 

These chronological facts thus baldly stated will 
serve to explain Balzac's letters which give the best 
pictures of his life and mind during these 3'ears. 

"Berlin, Oct. 14, 1843. 
"Dear Countess, — I arrived here this morning at 
six o'clock without stopping except for twelve hours at 
Tilsit. ... As long as I was on Russian soil I seemed 
to be still with you, and though I was not exactly gay, 
you must have seen by nry little note from Taurogen, 
that I could still make a jest of my sorrows. But once 
on foreign soil I can tell you nothing, except that this 
dreadful journey ma}^ be made to go to you, but not in 
leaving } 7 ou. The aspect of Russian territory, without 
cultivation, without inhabitants, seemed natural, but 
the same sight in Prussia was horribly sad, — in 
keeping with the sadness within me. Those barren 
tracts, that sterile soil, that cold desolation, that utter 
povert}', pierced and chilled me. I felt more saddened 
than if there had been a contrast between the condition 
of my heart and that of Nature. 



296 Honor e de Balzac. 

" I know how you feel by the way I clo. There is a 
void within me which widens and deepens more and 
more, and from which I cannot turn my mind. I have 
given up going to Dresden ; I have not the courage. 
Holbein's Madonna will not be stolen before next year, 
and then, in the month of May, I shall make the trip 
with other thoughts in my mind. Don't blame me for 
my faint-heartedness. M3- present journey gives me 
none of the pleasure I fancied it would when 3'ou said 
to me in Petersburg, ' Go here,' and ; Go there.' I 
listened, and went in spirit, for }'ou bade me ; but 
now, how can I help it ? away from you, all is lifeless 
and soulless. Next year, perhaps ! but now I have 
only the gulf of toil before me ; and to that I must go 
b\- the shortest way. 

"This dismal Berlin is not comparable with the 
sumptuous Petersburg. In the first place, one could 
cut out a score of mean little towns like the capital 
of Brandebonrg from the great ctty of the great Euro- 
pean empire, and the latter would still have enough 
left to crush twent} T other little Berlins. At first sight 
Berlin seems more populous. I have seen more people 
in the streets than we did at Petersburg. Moreover, 
the houses, without being handsome, seem to me well 
built. The public buildings, ugh' to look at, are of 
handsome cut stone, with space about them to show 
their proportions, — that is one trick, no doubt, by 
which Berlin seems more populous than Petersburg. 
. . . Berlin and its inhabitants will never be otherwise 
than a mean little city inhabited by vulgar, fat people ; 
and 3'et I must admit that to any one returning from 
Russia, Germany presents an undefinable something 



Honore de Balzac. 297 

which can only be rendered by the magic word ' lib- 
erty,' — expressed in free manners, or rather, I should 
sa} r , freedom in manner and wa3's." 

" Oct. 16. 

"I dined } T esterday with Madame Bresson; it was 
' a grand diplomatic dinner in honor of the king's fete- 
day. Except the ambassadress herself, the guests 
were all old and ngl}', or 3'oung and frightful. The 
handsomest woman, though not the youngest, was the 
one I took into dinner. Guess who? — the Duchesse 
de Talleyrand (ex-Dino), who was there with her son, 
the Due de Valencay, looking ten 3-ears older than his 
mother. The conversation was wholly made up of 
proper names and trifling incidents happening at court ; 
it explained to me Hoffmann's ridicule of the German 
courts. . . . 

"Monsieur de Humboldt came to see me this morn- 
ing, charged, so he said, with the compliments of the 
King and the Princess of Prussia. He told me how to 
find Tieck at Potsdam. I want to see Tieck, and I 
shall take the opportunity to studj' that barrack of the 
great Frederick, who was, as de Maistre said, ' not a 
great man ; at the most a great Prussian.' . . . 

" Since writing the above I have seen Tieck in his 
family. He seemed pleased with my homage. There was 
an old countess present, a contemporary in spectacles, 
octogenarian perhaps, — a mummy with a green eye- 
shade, who seemed to me a domestic divinity. I got 
back to Berlin at six o'clock without having eaten 
a mouthful since morning. Berlin is the city of ennui. 
I should die here in a week. Poor Humboldt is dying 
of it ; he pines for Paris." 



298 Honore de Balzac. 

" Dresden, Oct. 19, 1843. 1 
"... Yesterday, having missed the hour for the 
Gallery, I wandered over Dresden in all directions. 
It is, I do assure you, a charming town : far preferable 
as a residence to that paltry and melancholy Berlin. 
There is more of the metropolis about it. It is half- 
Swiss, half-German ; the environs are picturesque and 
charming. I can readuy understand why persons 
should live in Dresden, where there is a mingling of 
gardens among the houses which refreshes the eye. . . . 
" I saw so many Titians in Florence and Venice that 
those in the Gallery here seemed of less value to me. 
Correggio's ' Night ' is over-rated, I should sa § y ; but 
his 'Magdalen' and two Virgins of his, the two Madon- 
nas of Raffaelle, and the Flemish and Dutch pictures, 
are alone worth the journey. The famous ' Tresor ' is 
nonsense. Its three or four million diamonds cannot 
dazzle eyes that have just seen the Winter Palace. 
Besides, a diamond says nothing to me ; a dew-drop 
sparkling in the rising sunlight seems to me a thousand 
times more beautiful than the finest diamond, — just as 
a certain smile is more precious to me than the finest 
picture. It follows that I must come back to Dresden 
with you to let the pictures have full effect upon me. 
Rubens moved me ; but the Rubens in the Louvre are 
more satisfying. The true masterpiece of the Dresden 
gallery is a picture by Holbein which eclipses all the 
rest. How I regretted that I could not hold your hand 
in mine while I admired it with that inward delight and 
plenitude of happiness which the contemplation of the 

1 Unimportant circumstances changed his plans and made him 
go to Dresden. 



HonorS de Balzac, 299 

beautiful bestows. We are prepared for the Madonna 
of Raffaelle, but Holbein's Madonna seized me like an 
unexpected joy. 

" It is eleven o'clock at night. I am in a hotel where 
every one has gone to bed. Dresden is quiet as a sick- 
room. I have no desire to sleep. Have I grown old, 
that the Gallery gave me so few emotions ? Or is it 
that the source of my emotions has changed ? Ah, 
truty, I perceive the infinitude of my attachment and 
its depth by the void there now is in mj' soul. For me, 
to love is to live ; I feel this, I see it more than ever 
now ; all things prove it to me ; I recognize that never 
again can any taste, any absorption of mind, any pas- 
sion exist for me but that } T ou know of, — which fills not 
only my heart, but my whole brain. 

" Adieu, dear star, forever blessed. There may come 
a time when I can tell you the thoughts that now op- 
press me. To-night I can onI} r say that I love you too 
well for my peace of mind, and that absence from you 
is death to me. . . . There are moments when I see 
clearly the least little objects that surround you ; I look 
at that cushion with a pattern of black lace worked upon 
it on which 3-ou leaned, — I count the stitches. Never 
was my memory so fresh. My inward sight, on which 
are mirrored the houses I build, the landscapes I create, 
is now all given to the service of the most completely 
happy memory of my life. You cannot imagine the 
treasures of reverv which glorify certain hours — some 
there are which fill mj' eyes with tears." 

" Passt, Feb. 6, 1844. - 

" . . . I beg you not to be troubled about adverse 
reviews of me ; it might be more injurious the other 



£00 Honore de Balzac. 

way. In France a man is doomed if he gets a name, and 
is crowned while living. Insults, calumnies, rejection, 
will do me no harm. Some day it will be known that 
though I lived by my pen not a penny has ever entered 
my purse that was not laboriously and hardly earned ; 
that praise or blame are alike indifferent to me ; that I 
have done m} T work amid cries of hatred, literary fusil- 
lades, and have held m}- course with a firm hand, imper- 
turbably. . . . Dear star of the first magnitude, I see, 
with regret, that you commit the mistake of defending 
me. When any one says harm of me in your presence 
there is but one thing for you to do, — laugh in your 
sleeve at those who calumniate me by outdoing what 
they say. Tell them, ' If he escapes public indignation 
it is only because he is so clever in evading the law.' 
That is what Dumas did when some one said to him 
that his father was black, and he replied, 4 M}' grand- 
father was a monke}.' . . . 

" You say in your last letter : What a volume that is 
which contains La Maison ISTucingen, Pierre Grassou, 
and Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan. Per- 
haps you are right ; I am proud of it (between our- 
selves). Next comes Les Petits Bourgeois, and after 
that Les Freres de la Consolation. 1 Nothing will then 
be wanting to my Parisian scenes but the artists, the 
theatre, and the savants. Those done, I shall have 
painted the great modern monster under all its 
aspects. 

"Here then are the stakes I play for: during the 
present half-centuiy four men will have had a vast in- 

1 Now named IJEnvers de VHistoire Contemporaine. 



Honore de Balzac. 301 

fluence on the world, — Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell ; 
and I desire to be the fourth. The first lived on the 
blood of Europe, he was inoculated with war ; the 
second espoused the whole globe ; the third incar- 
nated in himself a people ; and I shall have carried 
a whole society in my brain. Better live thus than 
sit every night calling out, ' spades, trumps, hearts,' 
or troubling one's self as to why Madame Snch-a-one 
does thus and so. But there will always be some- 
thing in me that is greater than the writer, and far 
happier than he, — namely, your serf. M} 7 feeling, 
in itself, is to me nobler, grander, more complete 
than all the gratifications of vanity or fame." 

"Feb. 6, 1844. 

" Yesterday I consulted Dr. Roux (Dupuytren's 
successor), and he advises me to make a journey on 
foot as the only means of putting an end to the dis- 
position my brain shows to become inflamed. When I 
don't suffer in the head I suffer in the intestines, and I 
have always a little fever. But just now as I write to 
3'ou I feel well, or rather I feel better. . . . 

" Ah, one more look at that dear room in Petersburg, 
and a deep sigh, alas, that I am not there ! Why 
should n't you have a poet as others have a dog, a 
parrot, a monkey? — all the more because I have some- 
thing of all three of them in me. I tell you again and 
again, I am faithful (here the countess throws up her 
head and casts a superb glance). 

"Adieu, till to-morrow. The last two days I have 
recovered a little gayety. Can it be that something 
fortunate is happening to you?" 



302 Honor e de Balzac. 

"Feb. 19, 1844. 
" . . . Yes, you have every reason to be proud of 
your child. It is through seeiug the young girls of her 
sphere and those who are the best bronght-up here that 
I sa} T to you, and repeat it, that you are right in being 
proud of your Anna. Tell her that I love her, for you 
whose happiness and pride she is, and for her own 
angelic soul which I appreciate. . . . Do you know 
what is the most lasting thing in sentiment? It is la 
sorcellerie a froid, — charm that can be deliberately 
judged. Well, the charm in you has undergone the 
coolest examination, and the most minute, as well as 
the most extended comparison, and all is in your 
favor. You, dear fraternal soul, you are the saintly 
and noble and devoted being to whom a man confides 
his whole life and happiness with ample securit}*. You 
are the pharos, the light-giving star, the sicura He- 
chezza, senza brama. I have understood j'ou, even 
to your sadness, which I love. Among all the reasons 
which I find to love you — and to love you with that 
flame of youth which brought me the only happy 
moment of my past life — there is not one against my 
loving, respecting, admiring 3-011. In your presence 
no mental satiety is possible : in that I sa} T to you a 
great thing — I say the thing that makes happiness. 
You will learn henceforth, from day to day, from year 
to 3'ear, the profound truth of what I am now writing 
to \*ou. Whence comes it? I know not; perhaps from 
the similarit3 T of characters, or that of minds, but 
above all from that admirable phenomenon called in- 
timate comprehension, and also from the circumstances 
of our lives. We have both been deeply tried and 



Honore de Balzac. 303 

tortured in the course of our existence ; each has a 
thirst for rest, — rest in our hearts and in our outward 
lives. We have the same worship of the ideal, the 
same faith, the same devotion. Well, if those elements 
cannot produce happiness, as their contraries produce 
unhappiness, we must deny that saltpetre, coal, and 
such things, produce ashes. But over and above these 
reasons it must be said, dear, that there is another, — 
a fact, a certainty ; it is the inspiration of feeling, the 
inexplicable, intangible, invisible flame which God has 
given to certain of his creatures, and which enfolds 
them ; for I love you as we love that which is beyond 
our reach ; I love you as we love God, as we love 

happiness." 

" Feb. 28, 1844. 

"In spite of what you tell me of your plans for 
Dresden, I hardly believe in them. If you leave 
Petersburg the middle of May you cannot reach 
Wierzschovnia before the end of June ; how then can 
you expect to be in Dresden in October? Will four 
months suffice to take possession of your rights, exam- 
ine the accounts of the administration and the guardian- 
ship, and re-establish the statam quo of 3*our personal 
government? No, I know you cannot leave in Octo- 
ber ; and I know, too, your anxious tenderness for your 
child will never suffer her to travel in winter. Do you 
comprehend what there is of despair to me in these 
convictions? Life was only supportable in the hope 
of Dresden ; it will overwhelm me, annihilate me, if I 
have to wait longer. . . . 

" I went this morning for the proofs of what I have 
written of Les Petits Bourgeois. The printing-office 



304 Honore de Balzac. 

is close to Saint-Germain-des-Pres ; the idea came to 
me to enter the church, and I praj'ed for j'ou and your 
dear child before the altar of the Virgin. Tears came 
into my eyes as I asked God to keep you both in life 
and health. Perhaps, in returning from those heights 
I have brought back some gleams from the ideal throne 
before which we kneel. With what fervor, what ar- 
dor, what abandonment of myself, do I feel that I am 
bound to you forever, — for time and for eternity, as 
pious people say. 

"I inclose the first flower that has bloomed in my 
garden ; it smiled to me this morning, and I send it 
charged with all those thoughts and emotions which 
cannot be written. . . . No, never in my living life 
have I said one word of 3 t ou, nor of my worship, nor 
of my faith ; and probably the stone which will some 
day lie above m}^ body will keep the secret that I have 
kept in life. Therefore, there was never in this world 
a fresher and more immaculate feeling in any soul than 
that you know of." 

"Passy, Oct. 11, 1844. 

"To clear off some twent} T thousand francs of debt 
and to start for Dresden in December with Les Pay- 
sans finished, — that is my dream ; and if not realized 
how can I live through 1845? 

"The death of }*our cousin Thaddeus grieves me. 
You have told me so much of him that you made me 
love him whom you loved. You have doubtless guessed 
why I called Paz Thaddeus, and gave him the charac- 
ter and sentiments of your poor cousin. While you 
weep for his loss remind yourself that I will love you 
for all those whose love 3011 lose. . . . 



HonorS de Balzac. 305 

" Are you realty satisfied with the 3 T oung man? 1 Ex- 
amine him without predilections ; for such excellent 
prospects for your child will certainly tend to make the 
suitor himself seem perfect. Remember that her whole 
life is involved. I am glad the first points, those of 
taste and sj'mpatliy, so necessary for her happiness 
and j'ours, are satisfactory ; but, nevertheless, study 
him; be as stern in judgment as if 30U did not like him. 
The things to be considered above all else are prin- 
ciples, character, firmness. But how stupid of me to 
be giving this advice to the best and most devoted of 
mothers. I am sure I don't know whj* I am recom- 
mending prudence to one who possesses all the wits of 
all the Rzewuski, and who has an eye at the tip of each 
dainty little finger. 

" C came to see me yesterday. He is a terrible 

dullard. I am alarmed to think that the king takes 
him with him five times out of ten wherever he goes. 
Louis-Philippe commits the same fault that Napoleon 
committed. He wants to be all and sole. There comes 
a da} r when empires perish because the man they rest 
on perishes, having neglected to provide his substi- 
tute. One thing is certain, the peace and tranquillity 
of Europe hang on a thread, and that thread is the 
life of an old man of seventy-six." 

"Passy, Oct. 21, 1844. 

"I am perfectly well again, and have gone back to 

work. This is a piece of good news I ought to write to 

3'ou at once. But oh ! dearest, a year is a year, don't 

3 T ou see? The heart cannot deceive itself; it must 

1 Comte Georges Mniszeck, as suitor to her daughter. 
20 



306 Honore de Balzac, 

suffer its own pains in spite of the false remedies of 
hope — Hope ! is it anything more than pain dis- 
guised? . . . 

"I went out yesterday for the first time; and I 
bought a clock of regal magnificence, and two vases 
of sea-green marble, which are not less magnificent. 
A rich amateur is covetous of my Florentine furniture, 
and is coming to see it. I shall ask fort} r thousand 
francs. Another bit of news : Girardon's ' Christ,' for 
which I paid two hundred francs, is valued at five 
thousand, and at twentj^ thousand with the Brustolone 
frame. I have also found a splendid pedestal for that 
bust by David, which they tell me is a great success. 
This beautiful thing only cost me three hundred francs, 
and the late Alibert, for whom it was made, must have 
paid fifteen or twenty thousand for it. And yet you 
laugh, dear countess, at my dealings in the kingdom of 
Bric-a-brac. Dr. Nacquart is very much opposed to 
my selling the furniture. He says : ' In a few months 
you will be out of your present difficulties, and these 
magnificent things will be } T our glory.' 'I like money 
better,' I replied. So you see, Harpagon was the poet, 
and the poet was Harpagon. Dear, believe me, I can- 
not suffer much longer as I am. Think of it ! another 
delay ! When Les Pay sans is quite finished, I shall 
claim a word from you, permitting me to join you in 
your steppes." 

"November, 1844. 

" As for 3'our suggested plan, I would rather renounce 
tranquillity than obtain it at that price. When a man 
has troubled his country and intrigued in court and city, 
like Cardinal de Retz, he may evade his debts at Com- 



Honore de Balzac. 307 

mercy if he chooses ; but in our commonplace epoch 
a man cannot leave his own place without paying all 
he owes ; otherwise he would seem to be escaping his 
creditors. In these days we are doubtless less grand, 
less dazzling, but we are certainly more orderlj r , per- 
haps more honorable, than the great lords of the great 
century. This comes, possibly, from our altered un- 
derstanding of what honor and duty mean ; we have 
placed their meaning elsewhere, and the reason is 
simple enough. Those great men were the actors on 
a great stage, whose business it was to be admired, and 
the} T were paid for being so. We are now the paying 
public, which acts onlj' for itself and b} 7 itself. There- 
fore, don't talk to me of Switzerland or Italy, or any- 
thing of that kind. My best, my only country lies 
within the fortifications of Paris. If I leave it it will 
only be to see you, — as you well know. I should 
already have done so had you permitted it. 

"I have received a letter from Lirette, asking me to 
be present at the ceremony of her taking the vows and 
veil." x 

" December 3. 

"I got up at half-past two this morning, worked till 
midday, ate a hasty breakfast, and reached the convent 
at one o'clock. These good nuns really think the 
world turns for them alone. I asked the portress how 
long the ceremony would last, and she replied, ' An 
hour.' So I thought to myself: I can see Lirette after 
it, and get back in time for my business at the printing- 

1 Mile. Lirette Borel, a confidential friend or companion of 
Mme. Hanska, had come to Paris to enter, with Balzac's assist- 
ance, the Order of Saint-Thomas-de-Villeneuve. 



308 Honore de Balzac. 

office. Well, it lasted till four o'clock ! then I had to 
see the poor girl afterwards ; I did not get away till 
half-past five. However, it was right that my dear 
countess and Anna should be represented at the burial 
of their friend ; so I went through with it bravely. 
I had a fine place beside the officiating priest. The 
sermon lasted nearly an hour ; it was well written and 
well delivered, — not strong, but full of faith. The 
officiating priest went to sleep (he was an old man). 
Lirette never stirred. She was on her knees between 
two postulants. The little girls were ranged on one 
side of the choir ; the chapter was on the other, be- 
hind the grating which was made transparent for the cere- 
mon}\ Lirette, together with the postulants, heard the 
sermon on her knees, and did not raise her eyes. Her 
face was white, pure, and stamped with the enthusiasm 
of a saint. As I had never seen the ceremony of tak- 
ing the veil, I watched, observed, and studied ever}'- 
thing with a deep attention which made them take me, 
I have no doubt, for a very pious man. On arriving 
I prayed for you and for your children fervently ; for 
each time that I see an altar I take my flight to God 
and humbly dare, and ardently, to ask his goodness for 
me and mine, — who are you and 3-ours. The chapel, 
with its white and gold altar, was a very pretty one. 
The ceremony was imposing and very dramatic. I felt 
deeply moved when the three new sisters threw them- 
selves on the ground and were buried under a pall, 
while prayers for the dead were recited over those three 
living creatures, and when, after that, they rose and 
appeared as brides crowned with white roses, to make 
their vows of espousal to Jesus Christ. 



Honor e de Balzac. 309 

" Just then an incident occurred. The youngest of 
the sisters — pretty as a dream of love — was so agi- 
tated that when it came to pronouncing the vows she 
was obliged to stop short just at the vow of chastit\\ 
It lasted thirty seconds at most ; but it was awful ; 
there seemed to be uncertain ty. For nry part, I admit 
that I was shaken to the depths of my soul ; the emo- 
tion I felt was too great for an unknown cause. The 
poor little thing soon came to herself, and the ceremony 
went on without further hindrance. . . . 

" I saw Lirette after the ceremony; she was gay as 
a bird ; she said she was so happ} T that she prayed con- 
tinually that God would make us all monks and nuns. 
We ended by talking seriously of you and 3-our dear 
child. 

" To-morrow I am going to see a little house which 
is for sale near the church of Saint Vincent-de-Paul ; 
the Byzantine church which we went to see, you re- 
member, and where a funeral was going on. You said 
to me, looking at the vacant ground near the church, 
1 1 should not be unwilling to live here ; we should be 
near to God, and far from the world.'" 

" Passy, Feb. 15, 1845. 
" Poor dear countess, how jnany things I have to say 
to you. Without your inexorable order, I should have 
been in Dresden a month ago. . . . All these uncer- 
tainties have weighed heavily upon me ; for how can I 
work when every hour I expect a letter to tell me to 
start at once? I have not yet written one line for the 
end of Xes Pay sans. This uncertainty has completely 
disorganized me. From the mere point of view of 



310 Honore de Balzac. 

material interests it is fatal. In spite of j T our fine 
intelligence you are unable to understand this, for you 
know nothing of Parisian economy or the painful straits 
of a man who tries to live on six thousand francs a year. 
But the worst of all is the impossibility of occupying 
my mind. How can I throw myself into absorbing labor 
with the idea before me of soon starting — and starting 
to see you? It is impossible. To do so I need to have 
no heart. I have been tortured and agitated as I never 
was in my life before. It is a triple martyrdom of the 
heart, of the head, of the interests, and (my imagina- 
tion aiding) it has been so violent that I declare to you 
I am half dazed, so dazed that to escape madness I 
have taken to going out in the evening and playing 
lansquenet at Madame Merlin's and other places. I 
had to applj* a remedy to such disease. I have been to 
the opera, and dined out twice, and tried to lead a gay 
life for the last fortnight. And now I will work night 
and day and finish Les Paysans. It will take a month 
of herculean labor, but I inscribe upon m}' brain (to be 
rejected bj T my heart) the words : ' Think no more of 
your star, nor of Dresden, nor of travel; stay in 3'our 
chains and toil miserably.' " 

" April 5, 1845. 
"I do not know what to think of what } t ou say of 
m} T letter. I, to give you pain or the faintest grief ! I, 
whose constant thought it is to spare you pain ! Good 
God ! however right uiy intentions were, it seems that 
I have hurt you, and that is enough. . . . When I see 
you I will explain all. . . . Under such irritating cir- 
cumstances I was impatient. I write my letters hastily 
and never read them over. I say what is in my mind 



Honore de Balzac. 311 

without reflection. If I had reread that letter perhaps 
I should have sacrificed it to Vulcan, as I often do others 
in which my voice gets too loud.''' 

" April 18. 

" You write, ' I wish I could see } T ou.' Well, when 
you hold this letter in 3'our dainty fingers, may they 
tremble a little, for I shall be very near you, at Eise- 
nach, at Erfurt, — I can't now tell where, for I shall 
follow my letter. To-day is Friday, and I start 
Sunday." 

" Sept. 10, 1845. 

"My faculties have come back to me more brilliant 
than ever. 1 am certain that the present two books 
will be worthy of the former ones. I tell you this 
to calm the anxiety of your fraternal soul as to the reac- 
tion of the physical upon the mental faculties, and to 
prove to you for the millionth time that I tell 3'ou the 
exact truth and hide nothing, either good or bad. Go 
to the baths of Teplitz, or elsewhere, if necessary, only 
be faithful to 3*011 r promise at Sarmate. ... I have no 
words but the mute language of the heart to thank you 
for that adorable letter, in which j'our ga}-ety breaks 
forth with sparkling gush, — sweet treasure of your dear 
mind, which the charming weather has brought back to 
you. I remember your once saying to me : ' It is only 
wrong doers who can stay sad when the joyous sun is 
shining.' 

44 1 am working, working, — God knows how, and 
God knows why. When you hold this letter in your 
hand I shall probably have no debts, except to my 
family. We will talk these things over on the boat 



312 Honore de Balzac. 

from Chalons. There is much to tell, and I hope that 
this time j*ou will not be dissatisfied with your servant. 
I have an enormous amount of work to do in thinking, 
writing, and correcting, so as to be free to accompany 
you. When this letter reaches 3*011, think that we are 
each going towards the other. Take care of yourself; 
see to your health ; your child's welfare depends on it. 
I dare not say mine, and yet, what else have I in this 
world ? " 

" Passt, January 1, 1846. 

44 Another year, dear, and I enter it with pleasure. 
Thirteen years in February since the happy da}' when 
I received your first letter. They seem to me links, 
indestructible, eternal, glittering with happiness and 
life. The fourteenth year will soon begin. . . . You 
are my happiness, as you are my fame and my future. 
Do you remember that early morning at Valence on the 
bank of the Rhone, when our gentle talk made you for- 
get j'our neuralgia? when we walked for two hours in 
the dawn, both ill, yet without noticing the cold or 
our own sufferings? Believe me, such memories, which 
are wholly of the soul, are as powerful as the material 
recollections of others; for in you, soul is more beauti- 
ful than the corporeal beauties for which the sons of 
Adam destroy themselves." 

" February 14, 1846. 

" You do not yet know that I am silently collecting 
superb things in art furniture, — thanks to researches, 
tramps about Paris, economies and privations. I don't 
mean to speak of this, however ; I shall not unmask 
my batteries until my dream gathers more and more 
the semblance of reality. . . . Yesterda}* I found two 



Honor e de Balzac. 313 

Sevres vases (of the Restoration) which were, no doubt, 
painted for some entomologist, for they are covered 
with the loveliest insects ; evidently the work of an 
artist, and of great value, — a real discovery, a rare 
chance, such as I have never before met with. With 
time and patience one can find everything in Paris, 
even bargains. Just now I am in treatj T for a chan- 
delier which must have belonged to some emperor of 
Germany, for it is topped by a double-headed eagle. 
It is Flemish, and certainly came from Brussels before 
the Revolution ; weighs two hundred pounds, and is all 
brass. I expect to get it for its intrinsic value, 450 
francs. I want it for mj- dining-room, which will be in 
the same st}ie. I see }'Our alarm at this news ; but 
don't be uneasy, I am not making debts ; I obey your 
supreme commands. ... I saw the other day in a 
bric-a-brac shop a miniature of Madame de Sevigne, 
done, I thought, in her lifetime. It can be had for 
veiy little; do 3-011 want it? It struck me as rather 
good, but I had no time to examine it properly." 

"16th. 
" I have seen that miniature again and it is hideous. 
But on the other hand I have bought a portrait of 
Maria Leczinska after Coypel, evidently painted in 
his atelier. I got it for the value of the frame. It 
is one of those portraits of queens such as the} T give 
to cities or great personages, and will do very well 
to decorate the salon. Gautier is to bring me a 
painter named Chenavard to pass judgment on it, 
for, like Louis XIV., ' I don't choose to deceive 
myself.' " 



314 Honore de Balzac. 

"Passy, June 14, 1846. 

"My financial situation is better than I thought. 
My principal creditors" are perfectly satisfied with the 
liberal manner in which I have settled their accounts. 
I can easily pay all. My health is excellent, and as 
for talent — oh ! I have recovered it in all its early 
bloom. My arrangements with publishers will be con- 
cluded this week. Write me the exact time when you 
will permit me to go to you, so that I may be quite 
ready. Here is what I am going to work at now : 
L'Histoire des Parents Pauvres, Le Bonhomme 
Pons, and La Cousine Bette ; also Les Me/aits d'un 
Procureur du roi, and the last of Les Paysans. This 
will bring me in more than my paj'inents. . . . The 
publishing business is just now in a bad way. I am 
to see Furne, Veron, and Charpentier this morning. 

"I am going valiantly to work with much ardor. 
Already I have spent two long nights on Le Bon- 
homme Pons. I think it will be a realty fine work, 
remarkable even among those I am best satisfied with. 
You shall see ! I have dedicated it to our dear Teano, 
and I want it to be worth j T of him. The story belongs 
to the order of Cesar Birotteau and the Lnterdiction. 
The point is to interest the reader in a poor and simple- 
minded man, an old man, crushed by humiliations and 
insults, full of feeling, forgiving all and revenging him- 
self only by benefits. La Cousine Bette is also a poor 
relation, crushed by humiliations and insults, living in 
the midst of three or four families, and meditating ven- 
geance for her bruised pride and wounded vanity. 
These two histories, with that of Pierrette, will make 
the series of Les Parents Pauvres" 



Honore de Balzac. 315 

" July 14, 1846. 

" Two years of peace and tranquillity are absolutely 
necessaiy to soothe my soul after sixteen years of suc- 
cessive catastrophes. I feel, I do assure you, very 
weary of these incessant struggles. If it were not for 
the new motives for courage which have entered my 
heart I should, like that drowning man whose strength 
kept him up for hours in a furious sea, succumb at last 
to the gentler waves within sight of port. To be 
dragged incessantly awa} T from all calmness and from 
the work of the mind by annoyances and anxieties 
which would drive ordinary people mad, is that living, 
I ask you ? 

"I have not lived in these latter } T ears, except at 
Dresden, Baden, Rome, or when we journeyed together. 
Thanks be to you, oh, dear and tender consoling angel, 
who alone have poured into my desolate life some 
drops of pure happiness, that marvellous oil which 
does at times give courage and vigor to the fainting 
wrestler. That alone should open to }'Oii the gates of 
paradise, if indeed you have any faults to reproach 
yourself with, — you, perfect woman, devoted mother, 
kind and compassionate friend. It is a great and noble 
mission to console those who have found no consolation 
on this earth. I have in the treasure of j'our letters, 
in the still greater treasure of nvy recollections, in the 
grateful and constant thought of the good yon have 
done to my soul by your advice and your example, a 
sovereign remedy against all misfortunes ; and I bless 
you very often, my dear and beneficent star, in the 
silence of night and in the worst of my troubles. May 
that blessing, which looks to God as the author of all 



316 Honore de Balzac. 

good, reach you often. Try to hear it in the murmur- 
ing sounds which are heard in the soul though we 
know not whence thej' come. My God ! without you, 
where should I be?" . . . 

"July 20, 1846. 
" You tell me of complications in your affairs. But, 
as } T ou sa} T , we must trust in Providence, for all things 
are in danger if we sound the earth about us. ... I 
must tell you, however, that nothing surprises me 
more than to see you so troubled over things } r ou can- 
not change, — } t ou, whom I have seen so submissive 
to the Divine will ; you, who have always walked 
straight before you, looking neither to the right nor to 
the left, and still less behind } r ou, where the past is 
engulfed as one dead. Wiry not let } T ourself be led by 
the hand of God through the world and through life as 
3'ou have been hitherto ; and so advance into the future 
with that calmness, serenity, and confidence which a 
faith like 3-ours ought to inspire? I must admit that in 
seeing nry star, which shines with so pure a ray, thus 
disturbed about material interests, there is something, I 
know not what, which I do not like, and which makes 
me suffer. You have alread} T given too much of }'our 
time and } T our beautiful youth to such cares, in spite of 
your instincts and your natural aversions ; but 3'ou were 
then compelled to do so by necessity, by the interests 
of your beloved child, and b}' }'our sense of duty. Now 
that you have fulfilled with such scrupulous and merito- 
rious thoroughness j'our obligations to your admirable 
daughter, who understands so well what she owes to 
you, and whom 3-011 have now established according to 
the choice of her heart and also in accordance with 



Honore de Balzac. 317 

your own ideas and sympathies, you surely have noth- 
ing more to do than to seek the rest and quietude you 
so fully deserve, and give up the burden of business 
affairs to 3*0111* children, who will continue the work of 
your patient and laborious administration. What can 
3 T ou fear for them, so intelligent, so enlightened, so 
reasonable, so perfectly united, so fitted for one another? 
Why foresee events which might trouble such security? 
Wiry fear catastrophes which, I delight in thinking, 
can never happen? B3 7 spending your strength on 
imaginary dangers you will have none left for real ones 
— if they ever threaten you, which I doubt." 

" July 29, 1846. 
" I have just found a letter from } T our children in the 
post-office, to which Anna has added these few words, 
which make me uneasy. She says : * Mamma is sad 
and suffering. You ought to come here and help us to 
distract her mind.' I went at once and took my place 
as far as Mayence. I shall go through as punctually 
as possible ; } t ou cannot doubt it. Adieu." 

He joined them soon after at Wiesbaden and made 
the little trip to Strasburg which has already been 
mentioned. During this and the following year (1846, 
1847) he did no other work than to finish certain books 
alreadj' in course of publication, and write the first third 
of Le Depute d'Arcis, which was finished b}' M. 
Charles Rabou and published three years after Balzac's 
death. 

In October, 1847, he made his first visit to Madame 
Hanska's home in the Ukraine, of which he gives the 
following description to his sister, Madame Surville. 



318 Honore de Balzac. 

" Wierzschovnia, Oct. 8, 1847. 

" My dear Sister, — I arrived here without other 
accident than extreme fatigue ; for I have come over a 
quarter of the earth's diameter and even more in eight 
days, without stopping or going to bed. If I had 
doubled the distance I should have found m}'self beyond 
the Himalayas. As I got here ten days before my 
letter, I greatly surprised my friends, who were much 
touched b} T my eagerness. 

" This habitation is an actual Louvre, and the territory 
belonging to it greater than that of one of our depart- 
ments. In France we have no conception of the extent 
and fertility of these great estates, where no manure is 
ever used, and where they sow wheat } T ear after year. 
Though the young count and countess have something 
like twent}' thousand male peasants (fort} r thousand 
souls) to their share alone, it would require four hundred 
thousand to keep all the land in cultivation. The} r only 
sow as much as they are able to reap and gather in. . . . 

" The country is peculiar in the sense that side bj- side 
with the utmost magnificence the commonest comforts 
are lacking. This estate is the only one in the province 
which possesses a Carcel lamp and a hospital. There 
are mirrors ten feet high, and bare walls ; yet Wierz- 
schovnia is held to be the most sumptuous dwelling in 
the Ukraine, which is the size of France. Delightful 
tranquillity reigns. The authorities have been full of 
attentions, T might say chivalric attentions for me ; 
otherwise without such miraculous help, I could never 
have got here ; being ignorant of the languages of the 
regions through which I passed. From the European 
frontier to Odessa the country is a flat plain, like our 



HonorS de Balzac. 319 

Beauce. My arrival has been sadly celebrated by two 
terrible conflagrations, which burned several houses. I 
saw the dreadful sight. . . . 

"In spite of these fertile lands the commutation of 
crops into money is extremely difficult, for the bailiffs 
steal, and labor is scarce to thresh the wheat, which is 
done by machines. Nevertheless, few persons in 
France have any idea of the wealth and power of 
Russia. It must be seen to be believed. This power 
and wealth are all territorial, which will, sooner or later, 
make Russia the mistress of European markets for all 
natural products. . . . 

" I have taken a heavy cold, which will probably last 
me two months ; it is so bad I cannot leave the house. 
I ought to go to Kiev, the Rome of the North, a city 
with three hundred churches, to pay my respects to the 
Governor, who is viceroy of three great principalities 
of the size of an empire, and obtain my permit to re- 
main here. It is physically impossible that I should 
return to Paris for six or eight months. The winter is 
beginning, and I could not risk a journe} 7 at that season. 
I shall probably be in Paris towards April ; but even 
so, I shall return here immediately, as we wish to make 
a journey to the Crimea and the Caucasus and go as 
far as Tiflis. The idea of such a journey delights me. 
There is nothing finer than that region. The} 7 say it is 
like Switzerland plus the sea and the vegetation of the 
tropics." 

" November, 1847. 

" You cannot imagine the enormous wealth which ac- 
cumulates in Russia and is wasted for want of means of 
transportation. Here (and Wierzschovnia is a palace) 



320 Honor e de Balzac. 

they beat the stoves with straw, and burn more in one 
week than there is in the Saint-Laurent market in Paris. 
I went the other day to the foil war k of Wierzschovnia, 
which is the place where they stack the wheat and 
thresh it ; for this village alone there were twenty 
stacks, each thirty feet high by one hundred and twenty 
five feet long and thirty feet broad. But the thefts of 
the bailiffs and the heavy expenses diminish the reve- 
nues greatly. We have no idea in France of existence 
here. At Wierzschovnia, for instance, it is necessary 
to have all trades on the place. There is a tailor, a 
shoemaker, a confectioner, an upholsterer, etc., attached 
to the house. I understand now what the late Mon- 
sieur H. (who had a whole orchestra in his service) 
said to me at Geneva about his three hundred servants. 
" My great hope and desire is not, as yet, near to its 
accomplishment. Madame Hanska is indispensable to 
her children. She guides and instructs them in the 
vast and difficult administration of the property. She 
has given all to her daughter. I knew of this intention 
when I was with her in Petersburg ; and I am delighted 
that the happiness of my life is detached from all self- 
interests ; it makes me the more solicitous to guard 
that which has been confided to me. ... I have seen 
Kiev, the orthodox city of three hundred churches, and 
the riches of Lavza, the Saint Sophia of the steppes. 
It was well to see it once. I was showered with atten- 
tions. Would you believe it, a rich moujik has read all 
my books and burns a taper for me weekly before Saint 
Nicholas ! He gave mone} T to the servants of Madame 
Hanska's sister to let him know when I came to Kiev, 
so that he might see me. 



Honore de Balzac. 321 

" I have a delightful suite of rooms, — a salon, study, 
and bed-chamber. The study is in rose-colored stucco, 
with a fireplace, superb carpets, and commodious fur- 
niture. The windows are one sheet of glass, so that I 
can look round the landscape on all sides. You can 
imagine that Wierzschovnia is indeed a Louvre when 
I tell you it contains five or six other such suites of 
rooms for guests. As I am working hard just now, I 
breakfast in my own rooms and only go down to din- 
ner ; but the ladies and Comte Georges pay me little 
visits. It is a patriarchal life without the slightest 
ennui. 

"Your letters gave me great pleasure. I am delighted 
to know from my mother that the little house in the 
rue Fortunee is carefully guarded. Madame Hanska 
has been very anxious about it on account of the valu- 
ables it contains. They are the product of six years' 
economy, and she is afraid of thieves or accident. It 
is indeed a nest, built straw by straw." 

Balzac returned to Paris on the eve of the Revolu- 
tion of Februaiy, 1848. It was at this time that he 
met the gens-cle-lettres at the Institute, in response to 
Ledru-Rollin's invitation, of which Champfleuiy gives 
the amusing account already quoted. This young writer 
had lately dedicated a book (" Feu Miette ") to Balzac, 
who in return invited him to the rue Fortunee. The 
account which Champfleuiy gives of the sumptuous lit- 
tle " nest," destined to see a month's fruition of the 
hope of .years, is valuable as being one of the most per- 
sonal pictures which we have of its master, and the 
only one which shows him to us in his last years : — 
21 



322 Honor e de Balzac. 

"On the 27th of February, 1848, three days after 
the departure of Louis Philippe, Monsieur de Balzac 
wrote to ask me to go and see him in the rue For- 
tunee. His household appeared to consist of a valet 
and a concierge. M. de Balzac came downstairs to 
meet me, wrapped in the well-knowu white dress of a 
monk. His face was round, his black eyes excessively 
brilliant ; the general aspect of his skin olive, with 
strong red tones on the cheeks, and pure } T ellow ones 
about the temples, near the eyes ; his thick hair was 
ver}?' black, but threaded with silver, — a powerful 
mane. In spite of the ample robe, I noticed that his 
stomach was enormous. Monsieur de Balzac was hand- 
some. Unlike most persons who are unable to find the 
man of their thoughts when they first meet a genius, 
I was surprised b} T his beauty. ... It was not, of 
course, that Greek beauty which has turned the bald 
heads of France and Germany ; it was the beauty be- 
longing to his intellect, which was not shut in within 
himself (as in many men), but expanded itself on his 
face. The face of the author of the Comedie Humaine 
showed strength, courage, patience, and genius. His 
ej'es questioned and listened like those of a priest and 
a plrysician. I have never seen an}- like them for ful- 
ness of idea and depth. His joyous face inspired jo}', 
just as an actor who }'awns can make his audience 
yawn. All known portraits of Balzac are insufficient 
to represent him. 

" After two hours' conversation I rose to go. M. de 
Balzac took me clown a broad staircase different from 
the one by which we went up. I noticed, in passing, 
a marble statue of himself, three-quarter size, which 



Honore de Balzac. 323 

seemed to me second-rate. 'Ah! do you care for 
art ? ' he said to me. k Then I must show you my col- 
lection.' We went up through other rooms until we 
entered a long galler} 7 , in which the chief picture was a 
large Domenichino. There were many other pictures, 
but I have forgotten their subjects and the names of 
their painters. 

''As we walked along, I wondered a little that I 
seemed to know the place. M. de Balzac explained the 
various objects. He told me, among other things, the 
genealogy of the frames. One of them had belonged 
to Marie de Medicis, and M. de Rothschild was anxious 
to possess it. I was turning over in my mind how it 
could be that I knew this gallery without ever having 
entered it, when, as we passed into another room, M. 
de Balzac stopped me before a little carved wooden 
frame, empty, yet hung intentionally in a strong light. 

1 When the famous [Dutch antiquary whose name 

I have forgotten] heard I had a frame by this master/ 
said M. de Balzac, ' he would have given the last drop 
of his blood to get half of it.' Then the truth flashed 
upon me. I was in the gallery of Cousin Pons. Here 
were Cousin Pons' pictures, Cousin Pons' curios. I 
knew them now. 

"After the picture galley we entered a room lighted 
by a single window. The door once closed, nothing 
could be seen but cases filled with books in good bind- 
ings. It would have been difficult to get out of the 
room without a guide. . . . M. de Balzac then showed 
me, with the enthusiasm of a proprietor, the arrange- 
ments of the house, the convenience of the rooms, the 
bathroom, the boudoir of the late banker Beaujon, the 



324 Honor e de Balzac. 

frescos of which had just been restored ; and, finally, a 
large salon, full of all sorts of curiosities, carved fur- 
niture, comfortable arm-chairs just repolished aud care- 
fully regilded. I spent three hours in this way, — three 
rapid hours, — during which M. de Balzac seemed to 
me the man I had pictured him, — the simple and sin- 
cere artist, full of a certain pride which charmed me, 
showing deep respect for the hand of man in art, and 
loving literature as the Arab loves the wild horse of the 
desert which he has mastered." 

Balzac returned to Wierzschovnia in October, 1848, 
and did not leave it again till April, 1850. His letters 
to his sister during this period show the two-fold strug- 
gle that he went through ; first, with the fatal malady 
that was already upon him (without his knowledge), 
and next in the unavailing effort to bring Madame 
Han ska to take the step of marriage. The letters are 
unutterably sad ; not so much for what they say as for 
what the reader, with his clearer knowledge of all that 
was about to happen, sees in them. In the present day 
we know more of disease and its causes than the laity, 
or even many of the physicians, of the first half of this 
century. It is plain to all who read this history now 
that Balzac was in the grasp of a mortal malady as 
early as 1847, before he went to that cruel Russian 
climate, which gave him his coup-de-grace. After he 
was taken ill at Wierzschovnia, he trusted, with his 
natural confidence, to a local doctor, who tortured him 
with remedies to no purpose, against the advice of his 
own son, a plrysician of broader intelligence. Dr. Nac- 
quart, his lifelong friend and physician, being asked to 
give the causes of Balzac's death, wrote a long and 



Honore de Balzac. 325 

rather irrelevant statement, in which, however, the fol- 
lowing significant facts appear: "A long-standing 
disease of the heart, aggravated by over-work at night, 
and the use, or abuse, of coffee had taken a new and 
fatal development. . . . His breathing was short and 
panting, and forbade all active motion ; his voice, form- 
erly so strong, was weak and broken ; his eyes, once 
clear and far-sighted, were covered with a film or veil. 
The patient retained hopes of himself; but science had 
in the first instance diagnosed the complication of a 
marked albuminaria (profonde albuminarie) , and could 
see no prospect of recover} 7 ." Balzac himself seems 
never to have lost heart ; and this was fortunate in- 
deed ; for his ignorance as to his true state gave him 
his heart's desire in his marriage ; which appears (we 
are thankful to feel) to have been as deep a happiness 
to his wife as it was to him. 

The following letters and extracts of letters will tell 
briefly the story of the last two years : — 

" Wierzschovnia, November, 1848. 
" Young Ladies and very honored Nieces: 1 

"I am highly pleased with your letters, which gave 
me great satisfaction, and which any other uncle than 
one known for his agreeable writings would regard 
with blackest envy on account of their graceful live- 
liness, and the perfection of their style. Therefore 
have the} 7 won for each of you, as due recompense for 
such fine talents, a " caraco " made of magnificent 
termolama, trimmed with handsome fur ; which your 
august uncle will endeavor to smuggle through the 
1 Mesdemoiselles Sophie and Valentine Surville. 



326 Honor e de Balzac. 

custom-house, and which will make 3*011 objects of envy 
to all your companions in the drawing-class. You can 
never wear out }*our termolamas, because that thick, 
handsome silken stuff will last ten or fifteen years. The 
young countess has a fur-lined garment made of termo- 
lama, which her mother wore in 1830, and which still 
retains its colors. I don't know how the Orientals man- 
age to put the sun into their stuffs. Those Eastern 
peoples are drunk with light. 

"Do me the favor to send me the following receipts, 
clearly and carefully written out, so that they can be 
taught to moujik cooks : (1) the tomato sauce in- 
vented by your mother, exactly as it is served at your 
table ; (2) the onion puree which Louise used to make 
at j'our grandmother's. For here, I must tell 3*011, we 
live in the midst of a great desert, and in order to 
swallow a bit of beef or mutton (which is not Pre-Sale), 
one needs the resources and persuasions of Parisian 
cookery. Be proud of thus becoming the benefactresses 
of a land entirely deprived of veal, — I mean eatable 
veal ; for the cows do have calves here as elsewhere, 
but those calves are republican in their leanness. Beef, 
such as 3*ou know it in Paris, is a myth ; I remember 
it in my dreams. Excellent tea is a consolation, and 
the dairy products are delicious ; but as for vegetables, 
they are dreadful. Carrots taste like radish, and turnips 
have no taste at all. On the other hand, the}' make por- 
ridge out of many things, millet, oats, buckwheat, barlej*, 
— I believe they make it out of the barks of trees. 
Therefore, my dear nieces, have pity on this region, 
so rich in corn, so poor in vegetables. How Valentine 
would laugh at the apples, pears, and plums. . . . 



Honore de Balzac. 327 

" Now, Sophie, you need not be uneasy about the 
music for the Comtesse Georges. She has the genius 
of music, as she has that of love. If she had not been 
born an heiress, she would certain]}- have become a great 
artist. Music, her mother, her husband, — there you 
have her character in three words. She is the fairy of 
the domestic hearth, the sparkle of our souls, our ga} r - 
ety, the life of the house. When she is not in it the very 
walls miss her, for she brightens them with her pres- 
ence. . . . She is thoroughly educated, without pedan- 
try ; her naivete is delicious ; although she has been 
married two }'ears, she is as merry as a child, and full 
of laughter as a young girl, — which does not prevent 
her from feeling a religious enthusiasm for noble things. 
Physically, she possesses grace, which is sometimes 
more beautiful than beauty, and this triumphs over a 
complexion which is rather dark ; her nose is well-cut, 
but pretty only in profile ; her figure is perfect, supple, 
elegant ; her feet and hands delicate and wonderfully 
small. All these advantages are brought into relief by 
an air of distinction, of race, that indefinable air of easy 
grandeur which all queens do not possess, and which is 
now lost to us in France, where every one expects to be 
the equal of others. She speaks four languages as well 
as if she were born in the countries where the} T are 
spoken. She is keenly observing ; nothing escapes her ; 
I am often surprised by this myself ; but with it all she 
is extremely discreet. After living in the house with 
her some weeks I could think of no word to describe 
her to my own mind but ' pearl.' Her husband adores 
her. 

" I wish I could think that Valentine would study as 



328 Monore de Balzac. 

much as the Comtesse Georges, who, besides all her 
other studies, gives much time every da}* to the piano. 
The thing that has given her this splendid education is 
work. Now I must tell my dear little niece that to do 
nothing but what we like to do is the origin of all 
degradation, especiall}' for a woman. Rules to obey, 
duties to be done, have been the law of this .young girl's 
life, although she was an only daughter and a rich 
heiress. Even to this day, she is a little child in pres- 
ence of her mother ; she disputes with others the honor 
of waiting on her ; she has an English, I ma}* sa}*, 
feudal reverence for her ; she knows how to combine 
deep love and deep respect, tenderness with familiarity, 
without infringing on the enormous distance between 
her mother and herself. The young countess has never 
said { thou ' to her mother, and yet the problem of 
infinite tenderness and infinite respect is perfectly 
solved. 

" Don't think this a lesson, my dear nieces. I know 
your affection for your parents, who have made your 
childhood and youth a poem, such as }*our mother and 
I never had in our day, and which your excellent 
mother vowed you should some day enjo}\ In France 
we are not born, as these people are here, to see a whole 
population prostrate before social grandeur ; we have 
no longer the right to think an}* one beneath us ; we 
are each obliged now to acquire our own value person- 
ally. This will make a great people of us, — provided 
we do not let commonplace and vulgar vanities get the 
better of us. So I entreat Valentine to set tasks to 
herself, to find work to be done, if only to get the habit 
of duty, — of course without neglecting the ordinary 



HonorS de Balzac. 329 

and daity employments of the household ; and above 
all, to repress the desire to do only what one likes, for 
that is a descent into all misfortunes. 

"But that's enough morality, — for you are both 
such little pests that you are capable of thinking I 
make your ' caracos ' bitter to you. God forbid that 
I should be like those parents who spread their children's 
bread and butter with moral rhubarb." 

" February 9, 1849. 

" You tell me, m}^ dear sister, that you think of 
leaving your present house and finding a cheaper one 
elsewhere. You are right ; for in crises like }'our pres- 
ent one it is well to cut down expenses to absolute 
necessities. I can cite my own case for that. I never 
spent more on myself in Paris (counting carriages and 
trips to Sache) than two hundred francs. I advise you 
to look about the neighborhood of Pass}', les Ternes, or 
Chaillot ; there you will find as good an apartment as 
your present one for less mone}\ If I were Surville 
I should take a single room in a central part of Paris 
and keep m}- office there. In this wa}' you will pull 
through the present crisis. You know what means I 
employed to live cheaply. My cooking was done twice 
a week, Mondays and Thursdays. I ate cold meat and 
salad the other days. By contenting myself at Passy 
with strict necessaries, I managed to spend only a 
franc a head each day. I could do it again without 
blinking." 

" March 3, 1849. 

"The winter has not spared us; the cold has been 
like that of 1812. I took a fourth cold at Kiev, which 



330 Honor4 de Balzac. 

has made me suffer long and cruelty. The treatment I 
have been undergoing for my heart and lung trouble 
was interrupted, for I had no strength for it. I have 
reached the stage of absolute muscular weakness in 
those two organs, which causes suffocation for no cause 
at all, — a slight noise, a word spoken loudly. However, 
this last cold is getting better, and they are going to 
try and remedy the muscular exhaustion ; otherwise, 
the journe}* home would be veiy difficult. I have had 
to get a valet, — being unable to lift a package, or make 
any movement at all violent. . . . 

" The conclusion of the great affair of my life meets 
with difficulties foreseen and caused b}~ mere formali- 
ties ; so that though we are both most anxious to reach 
the rue Fortunee, there is still great uncertaintj'." 

" March 22, 1849. 
" At last I obtained permission to write to Peters- 
burg for the consent of the sovereign ruler to our 
marriage. He refused it ; and his minister writes that 
we know the laws and the}* must be obeyed. Weary 
of the struggle, Madame Hanska now talks of my 
returning to Paris, and selling everything in the rue 
Fortunee. Here, she is rich, beloved, respected ; she 
spends nothing ; and she hesitates to go where she sees 
only troubles, debts, expenses, and new faces. Her 
children tremble for her. You can see that in view 
of all these doubts expressed and felt about future 
happiness, an honorable man ought to depart, return 
the property in the rue Fortunee to whom it belongs, 
go back to his pen, and hide himself in some hole at 



Honore de Balzac. 331 

" I have, and I have always had in Madame Hanska 
the best and most devoted of friends, — a friend such as 
one finds bat once in life. Her children love me as one 
of their own family, but they do not wish their adored 
mother to run the risks of an unfortunate future ; and 
they are right. You cannot imagine the wisdom and 
good sense of Madame Hanska ; they are equal to her 
educational knowledge, which is vast, She is still beau- 
tiful ; but she has a dread of societ}* and all its annoy- 
ances ; she loves quiet, solitude, and study. . . . 

"The only thing that I thirst for is tranquillit}*, do- 
mestic life, and moderate work in finishing the Comedie 
Humaine. If I fail in this completely, I shall take 
what belongs to me in the rue Fortunee and begin my 
life anew. But this time I will board in some establish- 
ment and live in one room, so as to be independent of 
everything, even furniture. Will 30U believe me when 
I tell you that the prospect does not alarm me — except 
for my mother. But even then, by spending only one 
hundred and fifty francs a month, I could still pa}- her 
income. If I lose all here I shall live no longer. I 
should be content with the garret in the rue Lesdigui- 
eres and one hundred francs a month. The heart, the 
mind, the ambition, can desire no other thing than that 
I have sought for sixteen years. If that immense hap- 
piness escapes me I have no need for anything — I 
could desire nothing. . . . You must not think that I 
care for luxury. I care for the luxuiy of the rue For- 
tunee with all its accompaniments, — a beautiful wife, 
well-born, a competence, and friends ; but in itself it is 
nothing to me, — the rue Fortunee exists only for and 
by her." 



332 Honor e de Balzac. 

" April 9, 1849. 
" Would you believe that m}' troubles have made 
me lose two sound teeth, white and uninjured, and 
that without pain? No one knows what the years 
1847 and 1848 have cost me; above all in the un- 
certainty that overhangs my fate. Here I have ma- 
terial tranquillity, and that is all. ... I wish I could 
see something reassuring about the future ; but all is 
doubtful and tending to the worst side." 

u April 30, 1849. 

"lam still here, detained \>y illness. Alas ! I have 
paid tribute to 1848. I have come to such a pass that 
I can no longer brush my hair without suffocation and 
palpitation. Twice I nearly strangled from the impos- 
sibilit}- of inhaling and exhaling my breath. I cannot 
go upstairs. . . . Happily there is a doctor here, a 
pupil of the famous Franck (the original of my Medecin 
de Campagne). He and his son say the trouble is a 
simple hypertrophy and answer for my complete cure. 
But here I am, in for a course of treatment for God 
knows how long. . . . 

" This horrible illness, horrible for a man of nvy viva- 
city (for is it living to have to avoid everything, — the 
least expression of feeling, a word too eagerly said, a 
step too rapid?), is complicated by the effects of the 
climate. Till now, I have not felt the baneful effects 
of the Asiatic climate. It is fearful. I have headaches 
all the time. Heat and cold are both excessive. Asia 
sends us winds charged with elements quite other than 
those of European atmospheres. But, as I tell 3011, the 
doctors answer for my recovery, and I could not be as 



Honore de Balzac. 333 

well cared for in Paris as I am here, where ever}' one 
shows me such tender, fraternal, filial feelings and 
genuine attachment, like that of a loving famity. We 
live as though we had but one heart among the four. 
This is, I know, reiteration ; but it is the only definition 
I can give of the life I live here. . . . 

" Cost what it may, I shall return to Paris in August. 
One should die in one's form. How can I offer a life 
broken as mine is now? I shall do what my situation 
requires towards the incomparable friend who for six- 
teen years has shone upon my life like a blessed star." 

" June 21, 1849. 
" The trouble in my heart (not to speak of those in my 
stomach which are a consequence of it) has increased 
to such a degree that the treatment is renewed. I have 
been auscultated, and the disease named (so as not to 
alarm me) simple hypertrophy. It appears that the 
father undertook the cure against the advice of the son, 
who, imbued with our French ideas, thought it was all 
over with me. . . . [Here follow many details of his 
illness and treatment.] However, the doctor is con- 
fident he can complete the work and make me as good 
as new. He is a great plrysician, quite unknown. He 
does justice to the French faculty ; says they are the 
first in the world for recognizing and diagnosing dis- 
eases ; but declares them absolutely ignorant, with a 
few exceptions, of therapeutics, — that is, the knowiedge 
of means of cure. Is it not dreadful to think that 
Frederic Soulie died for want of this doctor of mine ? — 
for two months ago I was as ill as Soulie was when he 
put himself under treatment." 



334 Honore de Balzac. 

" August 5, 1849. 
" Affairs here, financially, are in a perilous state. 
Enormous crops, no money. I fear, for reasons not of 
a nature to put in a letter, that the purpose that brought 
me here is indefinitely postponed. Can you believe 
that it is impossible to send monej' out of this county? 
Not only does an imperial edict forbid it, but the Jews 
exact fifteen or twenty per cent commission. You can 
have no conception of the greed of the Jews here. Shy- 
lock was a joke to them, a born innocent, And re- 
member this is only in the matter of exchange ; when 
it comes to borrowing they sometimes require fifty per 
cent, even one Jew from another Jew." 

" October 20, 1849. 

" I have had what the doctor calls an intermittent 
cephalalgic fever. It was horrible. It lasted thirty- 
four days. I am as thin as I was in 1819 ; though 
there is still a little flesh on my stomach, the last refuge 
of the fat which illness has taken from me. . . . The 
fever is over and done with, but it has interrupted the 
treatment of the chronic affection. . . . 

" Tell my mother that although I cannot return to 
Paris now, I have hopes of a happy termination of my 
journey here ; you can safely say that. I had better stay 
here some months longer than go to Paris now and re- 
turn. You may say that things are perhaps going bet- 
ter than I am willing to write. But manage so that she 
shall not suspect that I am ill. 

" I have a dressing-gown for m}~ illness which forever 
puts an end to the white robes of the Chartreux. It is 
made of termolama, a Persian or Circassian stuff, all 



Honor e de Balzac. 335 

silk, with those miracles of hand- work you see in India 
shawls. It lasts for years. You are clothed with the 
sun. It is warm and light. My termolama has a black 
ground, with palm leaves wreathed with delicate little 
flowers with gold reflections, — all hand-work ; some- 
thing like Venetian brocade embroidered in silver and 
gold. My illness has made a baby of me. I am pos- 
sessed by one of those delightful joys we only have at 
eighteen. I march about in the gloiy of my termolama 
like a sultan. I am writing to you now in my 
termolama. 

" The Comtesse Anna and her husband have brought 
back from Wiezniovicz the alarm-clock of Marina 
Mniszeck, the czarina, whose wedding outfit, as appears 
from the archives of the family here, contained a bushel 
of pearls and six chemises. Their uncle was the last 
king of Poland, to whom Madame Geoffrin sold her 
pictures. The } r oung count and countess have brought 
to Madame Hanska the loveliest Greuze I ever saw, 
"La Jeune Fille erTra}"ee," done by Greuze for Mme. 
Geoffrin ; and two Watteaus, also painted for Madame 
Geoffrin. These three pictures are worth 80,000 
francs. There are also two admirable Leslies, "James 
II. and his first wife," a fine Van Djck, a Cranach, 
a Mignard, a Rigaud, a Netscher, and a portrait of 
James II. b}' Lely, all superb ; besides these, three 
Canaletti, bought by the king from the Rezzonicos, 
and three Rothari, finer than the Greuze. Rothari was 
a Venetian painter of the eighteenth century, almost 
unknown in France. The Empress Maria Teresa made 
him a count of the Russian empire. He is the Greuze 
of Italy. The Comtesse Georges wishes the three 



336 Honore de Balzac, 

Canaletti to be in n^ gallery, the two Watteans, the 
Greuze, and the finest of the Bothari in the salon in 
marquetry, for which I now want only two flat vases 
in malachite, and two jars to make it complete. Oh, 
I forgot two Van Huysums, which if you covered them 
with diamonds would be scarcely paid for. What treas- 
ures these great Polish houses contain ! and how the 
treasures rub shoulders with barbarism ! 
" Adieu ; I chatter like a convalescent." 

"Nov. 29, 1849. 

" I have had to go back to the treatment for heart- 
disease. M} T doctor is a great physician, buried at 
Wierzschovnia, who, like many another genius, dislikes 
the art in which he excels. ... He has invented pow- 
ders. . . . He keeps the composition of his powders so 
great a secret that he will not even reveal it to his son. 
He has radically cured persons much worse than I. 

" I don't wonder you are proud of your girls. They 
write me charming letters. . . . Those girls are the 
compensation for your life. We must not be unjust to 
Fate, we can accept troubles for such joj'S. It is just 
so with me and Madame Hanska. The gift of her affec- 
tion explains to me my sorrows, my misfortunes, my 
labors. I have paid in advance the price of this treas- 
ure. Napoleon said that everything is paid for here 
below, nothing is stolen. I even feel as if I had paid 
very little. What are twent} T -nve years of struggle and 
toil to win at last so splendid, so radiant, so complete 
a love. It is now fourteen months that I have been 
living here in a desert, — for it is a desert, — and they 
have passed like a dream ; without one hour of weari- 



Honore de Balzac. 337 

ness, without a word of discussion. Our sole dis- 
quietude has been caused by the state of our health 
and our affairs." 

To his friend and intimate associate, Monsieur Lau- 
rent-Jan, Balzac wrote occasionally on the subject of 
his dramatic work. It is evident that his mind turned 
to that as the field of his future career. He speaks of 
it with all his old courage in his last letter to this 
friend : — 

" Dec. 10, 1849, 

1 ' My dear Laurent, — A long and cruel disease of 
the heart, with man}' ups and downs, which attacked me 
in the winter of last } T ear has prevented me from writ- 
ing except on m} T inextricable affairs, and, as in dut3 r 
bound, to my family. But to-da} r the doctors (there 
are two) allow me, not to work, but to amuse nryself, 
and I profit by the permission to send you a little line. 

" If I get back to Paris within two months I shall be 
lucky, for it will take nearly that time to complete my 
cure. I have grievously paid, alas, for the excesses 
of work in which I indulged, — for the last ten years 
specially. But don't let us talk of that. 

" So, about the beginning of February I shall be in 
Paris, with the firm intention and desire to work as 
member of the Society of Dramatic Authors ; for in my 
long days of illness I have thought of more than one 
theatrical California to work up. But what can I do 
here? It is impossible to send manuscript over a cer- 
tain size. The frontiers are closed on account of the 
war, and no stranger is admitted to the country. I am 
sure there must be great difficulties in the way of litera- 
22 



338 Honore de Balzac. 

ture and the arts in France at this time. All is at a 
standstill, is it not? Shall I find an hilarious public in 
1850? It is doubtful. Still, I mean to work. Think, 
one scene written a day makes three hundred and 
sixt3 T -five scenes a year, — that is, ten plays. Suppose 
five fail and three have only partial success ; there 
remain two triumphs, which will be a pretty good re- 
sult. Yes, courage ! If health returns to me I will 
boldly embark on the dramatic galle}' laden with good 
subjects ; but God save me from bringing up before 
a bank of oysters. 

"I tell } T ou, my friend, all happiness depends on 
courage and work. I have had many periods of 
wretchedness, but with energy, and above all, with 
illusions, I pulled through them all. That is why I 
still hope, and hope much. 

" We have a learned man here, just from Kurdistan, 
where he found the Jews of Moses, pure blood. 

" We shall meet soon." 

" February 28, I860. 

" My dear Sister, — I was obliged to go to Kiev to 
renew my permit and have my passport vised. Alas ! 
it was fatal to my health. On the second day a terrible 
blast of wind, which they call here the chasse-?ieige, 
caught me, though I was so wrapped in furs no spot 
seemed left for it to reach me, and I took the most 
dreadful cold I have ever had in my life. . . . But 
nry cherished hopes may be realized. If so, there will 
be further delays. I must go again to Kiev to take out 
proper papers. All is probable ; for these four or five 
successive illnesses, and my sufferings from the climate 
(which I laughed at for her sake) have touched that 



Honor e de Balzac. 339 

noble soul ; she is more touched hy them than she is, 
as a sensible woman, frightened by my few remaining 
debts. I see now that all will go well. ... In that 
case my, or rather our arrival in the rue Fortunee will 
take place during the first two weeks in April." 

" Wierzschovnia, March 15, 1850. 

"My dear good, beloved Mother, — Yesterday, at 
seven in the morning, thanks be to God, my marriage 
was celebrated in the church of Sainte-Barbe at Berdit- 
chef, by a priest sent by the bishop of Jitomir. Mon- 
seigneur wished to many us himself; but being pre- 
vented, he sent a very saintly man, the Abbe Count 
Czarouski, the oldest and most distinguished of the 
Polish Catholic clergy. 

"Madame Eve de Balzac, your daughter-in-law, has 
taken (in order to remove all difficulties in the wa}^ of 
our marriage) the heroic resolution, prompted by her 
sublime maternal affection, of giving all her fortune to 
her daughter, reserving only an income for herself. 

u My return is now certain ; but it will depend on a 
journey to Kiev to alter m} r passport, and inscribe the 
name of my wife. . . . We are now two to thank you 
for all the care you have taken of our house, and to 
offer you our respectful tenderness. 

"Accept the assurance of nry respect, and my filial 
attachment. Your submissive son \_To?ifils soumis]" 

" Wierzschovnia, March 15, 1850. 
" My dear Sister, — Yesterday, at Berditchef, in the 
parish church of Sainte-Barbe, a delegate from the bishop 
of Jitomir blessed and celebrated my marriage. So for 



340 HonorS de Balzac. 

the last twentj'-four hours there is a Madame Eve de 
Balzac, nee Corntesse Rzewuska, or a Madame Honore 
cle Balzac. It is no longer a secret, and I write to you 
with the least possible delay. . . . The witnesses were 
Comte Georges Mniszeck, my wife's son-in-law, Comte 
Gustave Olizar, brother-in-law of the Abbe Comte Cza- 
rouski, and the priest of the parish of Berditchef. The 
Comtesse Anna accompanied her mother, both at the 
summit of happiness. It is, as 3-011 know, a marriage 
of the heart, for Madame Eve de Balzac has given her 
entire propert}- to her children, — Comte Georges being, 
perhaps, better to her than any son would have been. . . . 
" I hope we shall start for Paris in a fortnight; our 
journey will consume another fortnight. So, I can now 
say to you ' we shall soon meet.' 

" Thy brother Honore, 

at the summit of happiness." 

His old friend Madame Carraud had met with re- 
verses. Her husband was dead ; her means straight- 
ened ; and she had been obliged to sell the greater part 
of her propertj-. One of Balzac's first thoughts after 
his marriage was that it gave him the opportunity- to do 
for her what she had done for him in his dark days. 

" Wierzschotxia, March 17, 1850. 
" My very dear and kind Madame Carraud, — 
I have put off answering your good and admirable 
letter until toda}-, for we are such old friends that I 
cannot let you hear from anj r one but me of the happy 
conclusion of that long and beautiful drama of the 
heart, which has continued through sixteen years.. 



Honor i de Balzac. 341 

Three days ago I married the only woman I have 
loved, whom I now love more than I ever did, whom I 
shall love till death. I believe this union to be a com- 
pensation which God has held in reserve through all 
nry adversities, my years of toil, the difficulties I have 
met with and finally surmounted. I had no happiness 
in youth, no blossoming spring-tide, but I shall have a 
brilliant summer, and the sweetest of all autumns. Per- 
haps from this point of view nry most happj- marriage 
may seem to you a personal consolation, by proving 
that after many sufferings there are blessings which 
Providence will, sooner or later, bestow. . . . 

" I have so often described you to m}^ wife, and j T our 
letter has so fully completed the portrait, that you seem 
to her a friend of long standing. Therefore with one 
and the same impulse, the same emotion of the soul, 
we both offer you a room in our house in Paris, where 
you can live absolutely as though } r ou were in your 
own home. What can I sa} T to .you? That j'ou are 
the only one to whom we would make such a proposal, 
and that j'ou ought to accept it, — or you deserve 
trouble. For, reflect, did I not go to you in the sacred 
confidence of friendship, when you were happy and I 
was struggling through the storm, through the high 
waves of my equinox, drowned in debt? Now I can 
have the sweet and tender reprisals of gratitude. . . . 
Come to us, then, from time to time, to be near j'our 
son, to breathe-in art, Paris, elegance ; come and see 
and talk with enlightened people, and refresh yourself 
in two hearts that love you, — one because } t ou have 
been so good and tender a friend, the other because 
3 7 ou have been all that to me. 



342 Honore de Balzac. 

" This is only what I did in the old days at Saint-Cyr, 
Angouleme, and Frapesle. There I gathered strength ; 
there I had the sights about me that I needed ; there 
my desires were quenched. You shall now know how 
sweet it was to live so ; you shall learn by yoxxv own 
experience all that you were (without knowing it) to 
me, poor toiler, — misunderstood, weighed down through 
many years by physical and mental anguish. Ah ! I 
can never forget your motherhood for me ; your divine 
sympathy for suffering. Thinking of all this, and of 
the way 3'ou are bravely facing adversity, I — who have 
so often struggled with that rough adversary — I tell 
you I am ashamed of my happiness when I think that 
you are unhapp3\ But no, we are both above such 
pettiness of heart. Each can say to the other that 
happiness or unhappiness are only forms of being in 
which great souls can feel the} T live a stronger life. 
We know that we need as much philosophic vigor for 
the one position as for the other ; and that the unhappi- 
ness which finds true friends is, perhaps, more endur- 
able than the happiness which is envied. 

" So, then, when 3'ou come to Paris you will come to 
us, and without sending word. Come to the rue For- 
tunee as to 3'our own home, exactly as I used to go to 
Frapesle. It is my claim, nry right. I remind 3'ou of 
what you said to me at Angouleme on the day when I 
(worn out with writing Louis Lambert, and ill, you 
know wiry) feared madness, and spoke to you of the 
wa}^ mad people were abandoned. You answered, ' If 
you go mad I will take care of you.' Never have I 
forgotten those words, 3 T our look, the expression of 
your face ; they are all as plain before me as the}' 



Honore de Balzac. 343 

were on that June day of 1832. It is in virtue of that 
promise that I claim you now when I am mad with 
happiness." 

" Wierzschovnia, April 15, 1850. 

" My dear Mother, — We are delayed here. I can 
hardty see to write. I have some trouble in my e3'es 
which prevents either reading or writing. It comes 
from a draught of air and the present medical treat- 
ment. The doctor is not alarmed. He wants me to 
continue the treatment six days longer. I have had a 
serious relapse in my heart-trouble and also in the lung. 
I have lost more ground than I had gained. Every 
motion that I make stops both speech and breathing. 

" Oh, my poor eyes, — once so good ! " 

"Dresden, May 11, 1850. 

" We have been three weeks in making a journey 
which should have taken six da}'s. Sometimes it re- 
quired fifteen or sixteen men to hoist the carriage out 
of the mud-holes into which it sank up to the doorways. 
At last we are here, living, but ill and tired out. Such 
a journey ages one ten years. 

"Let the house be ready, flowers and all, by the 
20th. ... I want Madame Honore to see it in its best 
array. There must be flowering-plants in all the jar- 
dinieres. I mean this for a surprise, and shall saj' 
nothing about it. . . . Here is where the plants must 
be put: 1st, the jardiniere in the front room ; 2d, that 
in the Japanese salon ; 3d, the two in the bedroom with 
the cupola ; 4th, I want cape jessamine in the two tin} T 
jardinieres on the fireplace of the gray room with cu- 
pola; 5th, the two large jardinieres on the staircase 



344 Honore de Balzac. 

landings ; 6th, small ferns in the two bowls which 
Feucheres mounted. I don't know whether Grobe has 
finished the jardiniere in marquetry for the green salon. 
If clone (it must stand between the writing-table and 
the cabinet in marquetry), I want it filled with beauti- 
ful, beautiful flowers." 

"There is a Turkish proverb," says Gautier, in the 
essay from which we have already quoted, " which 
declares that when the house is finished death enters. 
Nothing is so to be dreaded as a wish realized. His 
debts were paid, the longed-for marriage accomplished, 
the nest for his happiness lined with down, and (as if 
they foresaw the coming end) even his enemies were 
beginning to praise him. It was all too good ; nothing 
remained for him but to die. His illness made rapid 
progress ; but no one dreamed of a fatal end, we had 
such confidence in Balzac's athletic constitution ; we 
thought he would bury us all. 

" I was about to make a journey into Italy, and be- 
fore leaving I went to say good-by to my illustrious 
friend in the rue Fortunee, where he had arrived with 
his wife a few weeks earlier. He had just driven out 
to the custom-house, the servant said, to recover some 
foreign curiosities. I left the house reassured ; and the 
next day I received a note from Madame de Balzac, 
dated June 20, which kindly explained, with polite 
regrets, why I had not found her husband at home. 
At the bottom of the letter Balzac had scrawled these 
words : — 

'"I can no longer read or write. 

' "De Balzac.'" 



Honore de Balzac. 345 

"I have kept that sorrowful line, — the last, probably, 
that the author of the Comedie Humaine ever wrote. 
It was, though I did not comprehend it at the time, the 
supreme cry of the thinker and the worker : ' It is 
finished ! ' The thought that Balzac could die never 
once came to me. 

" A few weeks later I was at Florian's on the Piazza 
San Marco ; the ' Journal des Debats,' one of the few 
French papers which reach Venice, lay beside me. I 
took it up and read the death of Balzac. I nearly fell 
upon the marble pavement ; and my grief was suddenly 
mingled with a feeling of indignation and rebellion that 
was not Christian, for all souls are alike in the sight of 
God. I had that morning visited the insane hospital 
on the island of San Servolo, and had seen decrepit 
idiots, drivelling old men, human larvae no longer di- 
rected by even animal instincts, and I asked n^self 
why that luminous brain was put out like the snuff of a 
candle when the vital spark remained in those darkened 
heads with a fitful gleam." 

Victor Hugo saw Balzac dying and dead, and the 
words in which he tells of that death-bed and the part- 
ing scene in Pere-Lachaise may fitly end this memoir : 

"On the 18th of August, 1850, my wife, who had 
been that morning to call on Madame de Balzac, told 
me that Balzac was dying. 

"My uncle, General Louis Hugo, was dining with 
us, but as soon as we rose from table I left him and 
took a cab to the rue Fortunee, quartier Beaujon, 
where M. de Balzac lived. He had bought what re- 



346 Honore de Balzac. 

mained of the hotel of M. de Beaujon, a few buildings 
which had escaped the general demolition, and out of 
them he had made a charming little house, elegantly 
furnished, with a porte cochere on the street, and in 
place of a garden a long, narrow, paved court} T ard, with 
flower-beds about it here and there. 

"I rang. The moon was veiled by clouds; the 
street deserted. No one came. I rang again. The 
gate opened ; a woman came forward, weeping. I gave 
my name, and was told to enter the salon, which was 
on the ground-floor. On a pedestal opposite the fire- 
place was the colossal bust by David. A wax-candle 
was burning on a handsome oval table in the middle of 
the room. 

" Another woman came in, also weeping, and said to 
me : ' He is dying ; Madame has gone to her own 
room. The doctors gave him up yesterday. They all 
said, " We can do nothing for him." The night was 
dreadful. This morning at nine o'clock Monsieur be- 
came speechless. Madame sent for a priest, who came 
and administered extreme unction. Monsieur made a 
sign that he understood it. An hour later he pressed 
the hand of his sister, Madame Surville. But since 
midday the rattle is in his throat, and he sees nothing. 
He cannot live out the night. If you wish me to do so, 
I will call Monsieur Surville, who has not 3'et gone to 
bed.' 

" Monsieur Surville confirmed all the servant had said. 
I asked to see Monsieur de Balzac. We passed along 
a corridor, and up a staircase carpeted in red, and 
crowded with works of art of all kinds, vases, pictures, 
statues, paintings, brackets bearing porcelains ; then 



Honor e de Balzac. 347 

through another corridor, where I saw an open door. 
I heard a loud and difficult breathing. I was in Mon- 
sieur de Balzac's bedroom. 

"The bed was in the middle of the room. M. de 
Balzac lay in it, his head supported by a mound of 
pillows, to which had been added the red damask cush- 
ions of the sofa. His face was purple, almost black, 
inclining to the right. The hair was gray, and cut 
rather short. His eyes were open and fixed. I saw his 
side face only and, thus seen, he was like Napoleon. 

" A light near the bed fell on the portrait of a young 
man, rosy and smiling, hanging over the mantel-piece. 

I raised the coverlet and took Balzac's hand. It was 
moist with perspiration. I pressed it ; he made no 
answer to the pressure. 

" The room was the same in which I had seen him a 
month earlier, gay, full of hope, certain of his recovery. 
We talked and argued long, politically. He reproached 
me for my ' demagogy.' He himself was legitimist. 
He said to me : ' How can you renounce with such 
serenity the rank of peer of France, the noblest of all 
titles except that of King of France?' He also said : 

I I have bought this house of M. de Beaujon without the 
garden, but with the gallery leading into the little church 
at the corner of the street. I have a door on my stair- 
case which leads into the church ; a turn of the lock and 
I am there at mass. I care more for that little gallery 
than for the garden.' 

"When I left him he followed me to the staircase, 
walking painfully, to show me this door. Then he 
called to his wife : ' Be sure you show Hugo all my 
pictures.' 



848 Honore de Balzac. 

"The nurse said, 'He will die at daybreak/ 

" I turned awa}', bearing with me the remembrance of 
that dying face. As I crossed the salon I looked again 
at the bust, immovable, impassive, proud, and vaguely 
beaming, and I compared death with immortality. 
This was Sunday. They buried him on Wednesday. 
He was first taken to the Chapel Beaujou, through the 
door which, to him, had been more precious than the 
gardens of his predecessor. 

"Edmond Giraud had made his portrait on the day 
of his death. 

"The funeral services took place at Saint- Philippe-du- 
Roule. The minister of the Interior, Baroche, sat be- 
side me in church, close to the coffin. He said to me : 
1 This was a very distinguished man.' I replied, ' He 
was a man of genius.' The procession crossed Paris 
and went to Pere-Lachaise along the boulevards. Rain 
was falling as we left the church and until we reached 
the cemeteiy. It was one of those days when the 
heavens seem to weep. We walked the whole distance. 
I was on the right at the head of the coffin, holding one 
of the silver tassels of the pall. The other pall-bearers 
were Alexandre Dumas, Monsieur Baroche, and Sainte- 
Beuve. 

"When we reached the grave, which was on the brow 
of the hill, the crowd was immense ; the path was nar- 
row and steep ; the horses could hardly draw the 
hearse, and it threatened to slide backward. . . . The 
coffin was lowered into the grave, which is near to those 
of Charles N odier and Casimir Delavigne. The priest 
said a last prayer, and I a few words. While I was 
speaking the sun went down. All Paris lay before me 



Honor e de Balzac. A 349 

afar off in the splendid mists of the sinking light, the 
glow of which appeared to fall into the grave at nry feet 
as the dull noise of the earth upon the coffin interrupted 
my last words : — 

" 'No, it is not the Unknown to him. No, I have 
said it before, and I shall never weary of saying it, — 
no, it is not darkness to him, it is Light! It is not 
the end, but the beginning ; not nothingness, but eter- 
nity ! Is not this true, ye who listen to me? Such 
coffins proclaim immortality. In presence of certain 
illustrious dead we feel the divine destiny of that in- 
tellect which has traversed earth to suffer and be puri- 
fied. Do we not say to ourselves here, to-day, that it 
is impossible that a great genius in this life can be other 
than a great spirit after death? ? " 

Let us leave him there where they laid him — the 
spot on which he stood in his inspired youth, and 
thought: "The noblest epitaphs are the single names, 
— La Fontaine, Moliere, — names that tell all and make 
the passer dream." 

A broken column and a single name now mark his 
grave. 



APPENDIX. 



COMPLETE WORKS OF H. DE BALZAC. 



La Comedie Humaine. 



SCENES DE LA VIE PKIVE'e. 





Name. 


Date. 


Dedication. 


I. 


Gloire et Malheur 


1829 


Mile. Marie de Montheau. 


2. 


Le Bal de Sceaux 


1829 


Henry de Balzac. 


3. 


Memoires de deux jeune 


3 






Mariees .... 


1841 


George Sand. 


4. 


La Bourse .... 


1832 


a Sofka. 


5. 


Modeste Mignon . . 


1844 


a une Polonaise [Mine. Hanska]. 


6. 


Un Debut dans la vie 


1842 


a Laure [Mine. SurvilleJ. 


7. 


Albert Savarus . . 


1842 


Mme. de Girardin. 


8. 


La Vendetta . . . 


1830 


a Puttinati. 


9. 


Une double famille . 


1830 


La Comtesse Louise de Turhein. 


10. 


La Paix du menage . 


1829 


Mile. Valentine Surville. 


11. 


Madame Firmiani 


1832 


Alexandre de Berny. 


12. 


Etude de fern me . . 


1830 


Jean-Charles de Negro. 


13. 


La Fausse maitresse . 


1842 


La Comtesse Clara Maffei. 


14. 


Une Fille d'Eve . . 


1838 


La Ctsse. Bologaini, nee Vimercati 


15. 


Le Message .... 


1832 


Marquis Damaro Pareto. 


10. 


La Grenadiere . . . 


1832 


a Caroline. 


17. 


La Femme abandonnee 


1832 


La Duchesse d'Abrantes. 


18. 


Honorine .... 


1843 


Achille Deveria. 


19. 


Beatrix 


1838 


a Sarah. 



352 



Appendix. 





Name. 


Date. 


20. 


Gobseck 


1830 


21. 


La Femme de treute ans 


1834 


22. 


Le Pere Goriot . . . 


1834 


23. 


Le Colonel Chabert . . 


1832 


24. 


La Messe de 1' Ath£e . . 


1836 


25. 


L'Interdictiou . . . . 


1836 


2(3. 


Le Contrat de mariage . 


1835 


27. 


Autre etude de femme . 


1839 


28. 


La Grande Breteche . . 


1832 



Dedication. 
Baron Barchou de Penhoen. 
Louis Boulanger. 
Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire. 
La Comtesse Ida de Bocarme\ 
Auguste Borget. 
Contre - Amiral Bazoche. 
Giacomo Rossini. 
Leon Gozlan. 



SCENES DE LA VIE DE PROVINCE. 



29. Ursule Mirouet . . . 1841 

30. Eugeme Grandet . . . 1833 

31. Le Lys dans la vallee . 1835 

32. Pierrette 1839 

33. Le Cure de Tours . . . 1832 

34. Le Menage d'un garcon 1842 

35. L'lllustre Gaudissart . 1833 

36. La Muse du departement 1843 

37. La Vieilie fille .... 1836 

38. Le Cabinet des Antiques 1837 

39. Les Illusions Perdues . 1836 



Mile. Sophie Surville. 

a Maria 

Docteur J. B. Nacquart. 

Mile. Anna Hanska. 

David (d' Angers). 

Charles Nodier. 

La Duehesse de Castries. 

Comte Ferdinand de Gramont. 

E. Midy de la Greneraye-Surville. 

Baron Hammer-Purgstall. 

Victor Hugo. 



SCENES DE LA VIE PARISIENNE. 



40. Ferragus 

41. La Duehesse de Langeais 

42. La Fille aux yeux d'or . 

43. Cesar Birotteau . . . 

44. La Maison Nucingen 

45. Splendeurs et miseres 

des courtisanes . . . 

46. Les Secrets de la Pi 

cesse de Cadignan 

47. Facino Cane . . 

48. Sarrasine . . . 

49. Pierre Grassou . . 

50. La Cousine Bette . 

51. Le Cousin Pons . 



1833 Hector Berlioz. 

1834 Franz Liszt. 
1834 Eugene Delacroix. 
1837 Alphonse de Lamartine. 

1837 Mine. Zulma Carraud. 

1838 Prince Alphonso Serafino di Porcia. 

1839 Theophile Gautier. 
1836 a Louise. 

1830 Charles de Bernard du Grail. 

1839 Lieut.-Colonel Periollas. 

1846 Prince di Teano. 

1847 Prince di Teano. 



Appendix. 



353 



Name. 

52. Un Prince de la Boheme 

53. Gaudissavt II 

54. Les EmpWes .... 

55. Les Comediens sans le . 

savoir 1845 Comte Jules de Castellane, 

56. Les Petits Bourgeois . . 1845 a Constance Vktoire. 



Date. Dedication. 

1839 Henri Heine. 

1844 La Princesse Belgiojoso. 

1836 La Ctsse. Seraphina San-Severino. 



SCENES DE LA VIE MILITAIRE. 

57. Les Chouans .... 1827 Theodore Dablin. 

58. Une Passion dans le de- 

sert 1830 



SCENES DE LA VIE POLITIQUE. 

59. Un Episode sous la Ter- 





rear 


1831 


GO. 


Une Tenebreuse Affaire 


1841 


61. 


Z. Marcas 


1840 


62. 


L'Envers de l'Hist. con- 






temporaine .... 


1847 


63. 


Le Depute" d'Arcis. 





M. Guyonnet-Merville. 

M. de Margonne. 

Comte Guillaume de Wurtemburg. 



SCENES DE LA VIE DE CAMPAGNE. 

64. LeMedecindecampagne 1832 a ma Mere. 

65. Le Cure de village . . 1837 a Helene. 

66. Les Paysans .... 1845 P. S. B. Gavault. 



ETUDES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 



67. La Peau de Chagrin . . 

68. Jesus-Christen Flandres 

69. Melmoth r^concilie . . 

70. Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu 

71. Gambara 

72. Massimilla Doni . . . 



1830 M. Savary. 

1831 Mme. Desbordes-Valmore. 
1835 General Baron de Pommereul. 

1832 a un Lord. 

1837 Marquis de Belloy. 

1839 Jacques Strunz. 
23 



354 



Appendix. 





Name. 


Date. 


Dedication. 


73. 


La Recherche de 1' Absolu 1834 


Mine. Josephine Delannoy. 


74. 


L' Enfant Maudit . . 


1831 


La Baronne James de Rothschild. 


75. 


Les Maranas . . . 


. 1832 


La Comtesse Merlin. 


70. 


Adieu 


1830 


Prince Frederick de Swartzemburg. 
M. de la Ribellerie. 


77. 


Le Requisitionnaire . 


1831 


78. 


El Verdugo .... 


1829 


Martinez de la Rosa. 


79. 


Un Drame au bord de la 


1834 


J La Princesse Caroline Galitzin 




mer 




I de Genthod. 


80. 


L'Auberge rouge . . 


1831 


Marquis de Custine. 


81. 


L'Elixir de longue vie 


. 1830 


Au Lecteur. 


82. 


Maitre Cornelius . . 


1831 


Comte Georges Mniszeck. 


83. 


Catherine de Medicis 


1836 


Marquis de Pastoret. 


84. 


Les Proscrits . . . 


1831 


Almae Sorori. 


85. 


Louis Lambert . . . 


1832 


Et nunc et semper dilectae dicatum. 


86. 


Seraphita .... 


1833 


Mme. Eveline Hanska, n£e Com- 
tesse Rzewuska. 



Etudes analytiques. 

87. La Physiologie du man- 

age 1829 Au Lecteur. 

88. Petites miseres de la vie 

conjugale. 

(End of La Comedie Humaine.) 



Theatre. 

Vautrin Drame 5 Actes 

Les Resources de Quinola Comedie 5 Actes 

Pamela Giraud .... Drame 5 Actes 

La Maratre Drame 5 Actes 

Le Faiseur (Mercadet) . Comedie 5 Actes 

Les Contes Drolatiques. 



Porte Saint Martin 1840. 

Odeon 1842. 

Gaiete 1843. 

Theatre Historique 1848. 

Gvmnace 1851. 



CEuVRES DlVERSES. 

Contes et Nouvelles et Essais Analytiques . . 
Physiognomies et esquisses Parisiennes . . . 
Croquis et fantaisies 



n all 41 

n all 27 

11 39 



Appendix. 



355 



Portraits et critiques litte>aires. Polemique Judiciare . . in all 25 

Etudes Historiques et Politiques iu all 36 

Correspowlance de H. de Balzac No. of letters 384 

These works are contained, in the foregoing sequence, in the Edition 
definitive des (Euvres completes de H. de Balzac, 24 vols. Calmann 
Le>y. Paris, 1879. The above list, and the two succeeding ones are 
made from those contained in the bibliographical work of M. le Vicomte 
de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, — as already stated. 



II. 



COMPLETE WORKS OF H. de BALZAC. 



With Year of Composition. 



1829. 

Les Chouans. 
Fragoletta, Latouche. 
Physiologie du manage. 



1830. 

Etude de mceurs par les gants. 
El Verdugo. 
Une vue de Touraine. 
Complaintes satiriques sur les 

mceurs du temps. 
Un Homme malheureux. 
L'Usurier (fragment de Gobseck). 
Etude de femme. 
Visiles. 

Voyage pour l'Eternite. 
L'Epicier. 



Des Artistes. 

La Paix du Manage. 

La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote. 

Le Bal de Sceaux. 

La Vendetta. 

Gobseck. 

Une double famille. 

Le Bibliophile Jacob. 

Le Charlatan. 

Les Deux Reves (Catherine de 

Medicis). 
L'Oisif et le Travailleur. 
Madame Toutendieu. 
Mceurs aquatiques. 
Des Mots a la mode. 
De la Mode en litterature. 
Nonvelle Th^orie du dejeuner. 
Etudes pour Le Eeuilleton des Jour- 

naux Politiques. 
Adieu. 



356 



Appendix. 



La Jeunesse francaise. 

Etude de Philosophie morale sur 

les habitants du Jardia des 

Plantes. 
De la vie de chateau. 
Physiologie de la toilette. 
Physiologie gastronomique. 
Gavarni. 
Le Ministre. 
Un Entr'acte. 

Une Vue du grande monde. 
L'Elixir de longue vie. 
Traite de la vie elegante. 
L'Archeveque. 
Ressouvenirs. 
Les Voisins. 
Une Consultation. 
L'Opium. 

La Keconnaissance du gamin. 
La Colique. 

La Comedie du Diable. 
Fragment d'une Satire Menipp^e. 
Des Salons litteraires et des mots 

elogieux. 
La Tour de la Birette. 
Le Garcon de Bureau. 
La Derniere Revue de Napoleon. 
Sarrasine. 
Des Caricatures. 
Une Lutte. 

Les Litanies romantiques. 
La Danse des Pierres (fragment 

de Je'sus-Christ en Flandres). 
Le Petit Mercier (Hist, des Treize). 
La Mort de ma Tante. 
Le dernier napoleon (Peau de 

Chagrin). 
De ce qui n'est pas a la mode. 
Une Garde. 
Si j'etais riche. 
Vengeance d'artiste. 
Entre Filets, I. 



L T ne Passion dans le desert. 
Une Inconsequence. 
Entre-Filets, II., III. 
Un Episode sous la Terreur. 
Souvenir d'un paria. 
Lettres sur Paris. 



1831. 

Les Deux Dragons. 

La Grisette. 

L' Amour. 

Le Marchand de bustes. 

Une Passion au college. 

La Femme de trente ans, l ere partie. 

L'Enfant maudit, l ere partie. 

La Piece nouvelle et la D^but. 

Un Lendemain. 

Histoire de giberne. 

La cour des Messasreries-royales. 

Ci-git la muse de Beranger. 

Une charge de dragons. 

La Requisitionnaire. 

Une Famille politique. 

Un commis-voyageur de la Lib- 
erty. 

M^canisme intellectuel, etc. 

Saint-Simonien et Saint-Siinoniste. 

Paris en 1831. 

Un Importun. 

Un Depute d'alors. 

La Femme de Trente ans, 2 2 partie. 

Le Cornac de Carlsruhe. 

Le Dimanche. 

Opinion de mon dpicier. 

Longchamps. 

L'Embuscade. 

Une semaine de la Chambre des 
Deputes. 

De lTndifference en matiere puli- 
tique. 



Appendix. 



357 



Des signes particulieres, etc. 

Enquete sur la politique de, etc. 

Tableau d'un interieur de famille. 

Le Provincial. 

Inconvenients de la presse, etc. 

La Patriotisme de Clarice. 

D'un pantalon de foil de chevre. 

Le suicide d'un poete. 

Une Ddbauche (Peau de Chagrin). 

Les Proscrits. 

Un dejeuner sous le pont Royal. 

La Belle Imperia (Contes Drola- 
tiques). 

Ordre public. 

Une stance a l'hotel Bullion. 

Conseil des ministres. 

Croquis. 

Don Pedro II. 

Maniere de faire une emeute. 

Un conspirateur moderne. 

Physiologie des positions. 

Rondo brillant et facile. 

Le Ban qui er. 

Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu. 

Physiologie de l'adjoint. 

Deux rencontres en un an. 

Les Grands Acrobates. 

Un Fait personnel. 

L'Auberge rouge. 

La Peau de Chagrin. 

Le Claqueur. 

Vingt et un Septembre, 1822. 

Jesus-Christ en Flandres. 

La Comedie du Diable. 

La Femme de trente ans. 

Le Sous-prdfet. 

Exaltation des ministres. 

Morality d'une bouteille de Cham- 
pagne. 

Critiques pubises dans La Carica- 
ture. 

Physiologie du cigare. 



La Fortune en 1831. 

Grand Concert vocal et instru- 
mental. 

L'Embarras du choix. 

Six degrds du crime Six degrds de 
la vertu. 

Details sur un prefet de police. 

Maitre Cornelius. 

La Dome des Invalides. 



Un journde du nez de M. d'Argout. 

Deux destinees d'homme. 

Religion Saint-Simonienne. 

Le Depart. 

Histoire du Chevalier de Beauvoir. 

Le Grand d'Espagne. 

£chantillon de causeries francaises. 

La Maitresse de notre colonel. 

Depart d'une diligence. 

Voila mon homme. 

Madame Firmiani. 

Le Message. 

Le Colonel Chabert. 

Proces de La Caricature. 

Sur le monument du Due de Berry. 

Le Philipotin. 

Terme d'Avril. 

La vie d'une femme. 

Facades choleriques. 

Contes Drolatiques (l er Dixain). 

Le Refus. 

Le Curd de Tours. 

La Grande Bret6che. 

Le Conseil. 

Enseignement. 

La Bourse. 

Sur la situation du parti royaliste. 

La Femme abandonee. 

Lettre a Charles Nodier. 



358 



Appendix. 



Louis Lambert. 
Voyage a Java. 
La Grenadiere. 

Critiques pubises dans la Carica- 
ture. 
Les Marana. 



Lettre ine'dit de Louis Lambert. 
Histoire des Treize (fin). 
Le Contrat de Mariage. 
Le Lys dans la vallee. 
Seraphita (fin). 
Brillat-Savarin. 



1833. 

Critiques publics dans la Carica- 
ture. 

Preface de THistoire des Treize. 

Histoire des Treize, l er episode. 

Histoire des Treize, 2 e episode. 

Le Prosne du joyeulx curd de 
Meudon. 

Histoire de l'Empereur. 

Contes Drolatiques, 2 e Dizain. 

Thdorie de la demarche. 

Perseverance d'amour. 

La Muse du Departement. 

Le M^decin de campagne. 

Eugenie Grandet. 

LTllustre Gaudissart. 

1834. 

Les Jeunes Gens de Paris. 

Histoire des Treize, 3 e Episode. 

La Femme de Trente ans. 

La Recherche de l'absolu. 

Seraphita. 

Lettre aux Fxrivains fran9ais du 

xix. siecle. 
Aventures d'une id£e heureuse 

(fragment). 
Le Pere Goriot. 

1835. 

Un Drame au bord de la mer. 
Melmoth re'concilie'. 



1836. 

La Messe de l'Athde. 
LTnterdiction. . 

Etudes critiques, Chronique 

Paris. 
La France et l'Etranger. 
Le Cabinet des Antiques. 
Facino Cane. 
Ecce Homo. 

Le Lys dans la valine (fin). 
Histoire du proces du Lys. 
L'Enfant maudit, 2 e partie. 
La Vieille Fille. 
La confidence des Ruggieri. 



1837. 

Les Illusions perdues, l^ re partie. 

Les Martyrs ignores. 

Les Employes, l er partie. 

Gambara. 

Contes drolatiques, 3 e Dizain. 

Cesar Birotteau. 

Six rois de France. 

1838. 

Le Cabinet des antiques (fin). 
Splendeurs et Miseres des courti- 

sanes. 
Les Employe's (fin). 
La Maison Nucingen. 
Traite des excitants modernes. 
Une Fille d'Eve. 



Appendix. 



359 



1839. 

Le Cure" du village. 

Beatrix. 

Illusions perdues, 2 C partie. 

Lettre a propos du Cure de village. 

Massimilla Doni. 

Les Secrets de la Princesse de 
Cadignan. 

Me'moire sur le proces Peytel. 

Proces de la Soci^te" des Gens-de- 
lettres. 

Petites Miseres de la vie conju- 
gate. 

Le Notaire. 

L'Epicier. 



Mem. de Deux Jeunes Mariees. 
Catherine de Medicis. 

1842. 

Les Ressources des Quinola. (Come- 

die.) 
Albert Savarus. 
Un De'but dans la vie. 
Les Mechancet^s d'un saint. 
La Chine et les Chinois. 
Un Menage de garcon. 
Les Amours de deux betes. 
Autre £tude de femme. 
Avant-propos de la Come'die Hu- 

maine. 



1840. 

Pierrette. 

Vautrin. (Drame.) 

Z. Marcas. 

Revue Parisienne. 

Un Prince de la Boheme. 

Peines de coeur d'une chatte An- 

glaise. 
Guide-Ane, etc. 
Monographic du rentier. 
Pierre Grassou. 
La Femme de Province. 
La Femme comme il faut. 

1841. 

Une Tene'breuse Affaire. 
Les Deux Freres. 
Notes remises a MM. les deputes. 
Le Martyr Calviniste. 
Ursule Mirouet. 
La Fausse Maitresse. 
Voyage d'un lion d'Afrique. 
' Physiologie de l'employe. 



1843. 

Ton}' Sans-soin. 

Sur Catherine de Medicis. 

Honorine. 

Monographic de la presse Parisi- 
enne. 

La Muse du departement (fin). 

Spl. et Miseres de courtisanes 
(fin). 

Illusions Perdues, 3 e partie. 

Pamela Giraud. (Drame.) 

Madame de la Chanterie. 

1844. 

Modeste Mignon. 
Gaudissart II. 
Les Paysans. 

Les Come'diens sans le savoir. 
Histoire et Physiologie des boule- 
vards de Paris. 
Ce qui disparait de Paris. 
Beatrix (fin). 



360 



Appendix. 



1845. 

Une rue de Paris et son habitant. 

Le Luther des chapeaux. 

Un Homme d'affaires. 

Petites Miseres de la vie conjugale. 

1846. 

Une Prediction. 
Lettres a Hippolyte Castille. 
Les Parents Pauvres, lere partie. 
IT En vers de l'Hist. contemporaine. 

1847. 

Les Parents Pauvres, 2 e partie. 
Le Depute d'Arcis (commence- 
ment). 



1848. 

Profession de foi politique. 
La Maratre. (Drame.) 
L'Envers de l'Hist. Contem. (fin). 

Posthume. 

La Filandiere. 

Fragments, Revue Parisienne. 

Le Faiseur (Mercadet). 

Code Litteraire. 

Les Petits Bourgeois. 

Le monde comme il est, etc. 

Inedit. 

L'Ecole des Menages. 
Etude sur la Russie (1849). 



III. 

TITLES OF BOOKS, TALES, AND PLAYS 

Announced by Balzac, but never Published. 

(Those relating to the "Wars of the Empire were intended for Les Scenes 
Militaires.) 



L' Absolution. 

Une Actrice en voyage. 

A marches forcdes. 

Les Amours d'une laide. 

Anatomie des Corps Enseignants. 

Les Anglais en Espagne. 

Annunciata. (Play.) 

Apres Dresde. 

L'Armee roulante. 

L'Armde roulante. (Play.) 



L' Attache" d'Ambassade. 

L'Aubergiste. 

La Bataille de Dresde. 

Une Bataille vue. de 1' Empire. 

La Campagne de France. 

Causeries du Soir. 

Le Chretien. 

Le Combat. 

La Comddie d'amour. (Play.) 

Comment on fait un ministere. 



Appendix. 



361 



La Conspiration Prudhomme. 

" (Play.) 

Le Corsaire Algerien. 

Les Courtisans. (Play.) 

Une Croisiere. 

Debuts d'un homme politique. 

Le Dernier ehamp-de-bataille. 

Les Deux ambitieux. 

Les Deux amours. 

Deux bienfaiteurs de l'humanite\ 

Les Deux Extremes. 

Les Deux Sculpteurs. 

Dialogue Philosophique et Poli- 
tique sur la perfection du XIX. 
siecle. 

Le Diplomate. 

Distraction. 

Une Douleureuse histoire. 

L'Emir. 

Les Enfants. 

L'Entree en campagne. 

Entre Savants. 

Les Environs de Paris. 

Etude sur la Russie. 

La Fille et la Femme. (Play.) 

Fragment d'Histoire gdnerale. 

Les Francais en Egypte. 3 epi- 
sodes. 

La Fr^lore. 

La Garde Consulaire. 

Gendres et Belles-Meres. 

Les Gens rid^s. 

Gobseck. (Play.) 

Les Grands l'Hopital, le Peuple. 

Le grand Penitencier. 

Les Heritiers Boirouge. 

Histoire du succession du Marquis 
de Carabas dans le fief du Co- 
quatrix. 

L'Histoire et le Roman. 

Int^rieur de College. 



Jacques de Metz. 

Le Juge de Paix. 

Le Juge d'Instruction. 

Le Manage de Prudhomme. (Play.) 

Le Ministre. (Play.) 

Le Ministre. (Novel.) 

Les Mitouflet. 

Monographic de la Vertu. 

Moscou. 

Le Nouvel Abeilard. 

Orgon. (Play.) 

L'Original. 

Les Partisans. 

Pathologie de la vie sociale. 

La Pe'nissiere. 

Un Pensionnat de demoiselles. 

Le Pere pro digue. (Play.) 

Les Petit Bourgeois. (Play.) 

Le Philanthrope. 

Pierre et Catherine. (Pla3 r .) 

Les Pontons. 

Le Pretre catholique. 

Le Privilege, tableau du XV. siecle. 

Le Prophete. 

Richard Cceur d' Sponge. (Play.) 

Le Roi des Mendiants. (Play.) 

Scenes de la vie du monde. 

Sceur Marie des Anges. 

Les Soldats de la Republique. 

Sophie Prudhomme. (Play.) 

Sous Vienne. 3 Episodes. 

La Succession Pons. (Play.) 

Le Theatre comme il est. 

Les Trainards. 

Les Trois Cardinaux. 

La Veille et leLendemain. (Play.) 

Les Vendeens, guerres civiles au 

XIX. siecle. 
La vie et aventures d'une idee. 
Une vue de Paris. 



362 



Appendix. 



IV. 

LIST OF THE AMERICAN TRANSLATIONS 

Made by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, and Pub- 
lished by Roberts Bros., Boston, U. S. A. 

Those marked * are, or will be, in process of preparation. 



THE COMEDY OF HUMAN LIFE. 



Scenes from Private Life. 



English Name. 




French Name. 


Fame and Sorrow. 


(Tale.) 


Gloire et Malheur. 


The Purse. 


" 


La Bourse. 


Modeste Mignon. 


(Novel.) 


Modeste Mignon. 


Albert Savarus. 


(Tale.) 


Albert Savarus. 


Madame Firmiani. 


" 


Madame Firmiani. 


Paz. 


" 


La Fausse maitresse. 


La Grenadiere. 


" 


La Grenadiere. 


Pere Goriot. 


(Novel.) 


Le Pere Goriot. 


Colonel Chabert. 


(Tale.) 


Le Colonel Chabert. 


The Atheist's Mass. 


" 


La Messe de lAthe'e. 


La Grande Breteche. 


" 


La Grande Breteche. 


*A Start in Life. 


(Novel.) 


Un D^but dans la vie. 


*The Peace of a Household. 


(Tale.) 


La Paix du manage. 


*Gobseck. 


" 


Gobseck. 


*The Injunction. 


" 


L' Interdiction. 


*The Marriage Contract. 


(Novel.) 


Le Contrat de mariage. 



Scenes from Provincial Life. 



Ursula. 

Eugenie Grandet. 
The Lily of the Valley. 



( Novel . ) Ursule Mirou et. 
" Eugenie Grandet. 

" Le Lys dans la vallee. 



Appendix. 



363 



English Name. 

The Two Brothers. 

The Illustrious Gaudissart. 
♦Pierrette. 

♦The Curate of Tours. 
♦The Old Maid. 
♦The Gallery of Antiquities. 



(Tale.) 



French Name. 
Le Menage d'un garcon. 
L'lllustre Gaudissart. 
Pierrette. 
Le Cure 1 de Tours. 
La Vieille fille. 
Le Cabinet des antiques. 



Scenes from Parisian Life. 



The Duchesse de Langeais. (Novel.) 
Cdsar Birotteau. " 
Cousin Bette. " 
Cousin Pons. " 
Bureaucracy. " 
Facino Cane. (Tale.) 
♦Ferragus. " 
♦The House of Nucingen. " 
♦The Secrets of the Princesse " 
de Cadignan. " 
♦Pierre Grassou. " 
♦Comedians unknown to them- 
selves. " 



La Duchesse de Langeais. 

Cesar Birotteau. 

La Cousine Bette. 

Le Cousin Pons. 

Les Employe's. 

Facino Cane. 

Ferragus. 

La Maison Nucingen. 

Les Secrets de la Princesse de 

Cadignan. 
Pierre Grassou. 

Les Com^diens sans le savoir. 



Scenes from Military Life. 



A Passion in the Desert. 
♦The Chouans. 



(Tale.) 
(Novel.) 



Une Passion dans le desert. 
Les Chouans. 



An Episode under the Terror. 

An Historical Mystery. 
♦Z. Marcas. 
♦Madame de la Chanterie. 



Scenes from Political Life. 

(Tale ) Un Episode sous la Terreur. 
(Novel.) Une Tendbreuse Affaire. 
(Tale.) Z. Marcas. 
(Novel.) L'Envers de l'Histoire con- 
tent poraine. 



Scenes from Country Life. 



The Country Doctor. 
Sons of the Soil. 
♦The Village Curate. 



(Novel.) Le Medecin de campagne. 
" Les Pay sans. 

" Le Cure' de village. 



364 



Appendix. 



Philosophical Studies. 



English Name. 

The Magic Skin, 
■with Introduction by G. F. 
Parsons. 

Louis Lambert (with same). 

Seraphita (with same). 

Jesus Christ in Flanders. 

The Hidden Masterpiece. 

Gambara. 

The Alkahest, or House of 
Claes. 

The Exiles. 
*L' Enfant Maudit. 
*A Drama on the Seashore. 
*The Red Inn. 
*Adieu. 
*The Maranas. 
*The Elixir of Long Life. 
*Maitre Cornelius. 
♦Catherine de Medicis. 
*Le R^quisitionnaire. 



French Name. 
(Novel.) La Peau de Chagrin. 



(Novel.) Louis Lambert. 

" Seraphita. 

(Tale.) Jesus-Christ en Flandres. 

" Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu. 

" Gambara. 

(Novel.) La Recherche de 1'absolu. 

(Tale.) Les Proscrits. 

" L'Enfant Maudit. 

" Un Drame au bord de la Mer. 

" L'Auberge rouge. 

" Adieu. 

" Les Marana. 

" L' Elixir de longue vie. 

" Maitre Cornelius. 

" Catherine de Medicis 

" Le Requisitionnaire. 



INDEX. 



Abrantes, Duchesse d', 125, 126. 
Albert Savarus, 169, 227, 270,271. 
Auberge Rouge, L', 86. 

Balzac, Honore de, 

complete life cannot be written: why, 1, 225. 

aspect, known chiefly under one, 2. 

contemporaries, records of, 3, 4. 

birth and infancy, until set. 4, 6. 

childhood, until aet. 8, 7-15. 

Vendome, at school at, aet. 8 to 14, 15-17. 47-58. 

Tours, life at, aet. 14 to 15. 17-20. 

Paris, school life in, aet. 15 to 17, 20, 60-63. 

law studies, set. 17 to 20, 22-24. 

garret, life and letters in, aet. 20 to 21, 26-39, 65 68. 

Villeparisis, life and letters, aet. 21 to 23, 40, 41, 68. 

Rue de Tournon, life in aet. 28 to 32, 77-82, 116. 

literary life, desire for, 24, 25, 64. 

a seer; the gift of avatar, 66, 67, 208. 

misjudged by friends, 25, 26, 57, 59, 64, 75-77. 

political opinions, 63, 135-141. 

publisher,, attempt as, 70-74, 115, 116. 

Comedie Humaine, first idea of La, 83, 84. 

personages, his view of his, 83-85, 88. 

courage under trials, 88-90. 91-92, 144, 244, 277-279, 333. 

illusions gave him courage, 100-103, 106, 111, 180, 338. 

Sardinia, trip to, 103-107, 146, 279-286. 

neologisms, he defends his, 111, 112. 

early life as a man withheld, 113. 

literary career, opening of, 117-120. 

journalist, as, 119. 

journalism, opinion of, 119, 120. 



66 Index. 

alzac, Honord de, — continued. 
rue Cassini, removes to, 120. 
health, geniality, vigor, 58, 59, 123. 
portrait by Lamartine, 123-125. 
Duchesse d'Abrantes, friendship with, 125, 126. 
"Louise," correspondence with, 127. 
Mine. Hanska, first letter from, 127. 
Duchesse de Castries, relations with, 127-134. 
Mme. Carraud, friendship with, 134-146, 340-341. 
sympathy with those oppressed, 139. 
Mme. de Berny, first mention of, 142, 147. 
woman, feelings and work for, 141, 142, 227, 228, 258-268. 
Les Jardies, 146, 147, 187-189, 242. 
publishers, difficulties with, 149-154, 158. 
conscience as to his work, 150. 
publishing, Balzac's system of, 151, 152. 
profits of work doubtful, 152, 153. 
Soc. des Gens-de-lettres, services to, 154. 
last meeting with Gens-de-lettres, 156, 157. 
lawsuit with Revue de Paris, 160, 161, 231-237. 
habits of work, 161, 162, 213-216. 
devotion of servants, 162, 163. 
founds the Chronique de Paris, 163-165. 
founds the Revue Paris ienne, 165. 
posterity, can be judged only by, 165, 166. 
dramatic work, 166-170, 234. 
modernity ; Gautier's view narrow, 170-172. 
his style* 173-176, 206-207. 
"the father of realism," 177-179. 
what is in a name, 180-184, 245. 
the vernal grasses, 184, 185. 
result of twelve years' work, 186. 
desire for heights, 187, 188. 
academy, refused admittance to, 190, 191. 
George Sand's judgment of him, 192-203. 
Theophile Gautier's judgment of him, 204-230. 
enemies; how acquired, 232. 
regrets Monographie de la presse, 233. 
loyalty in friendship, 237, 253, 341-341. 
knowledge not superficial, 240. 
desire for money justified, 241. 
criticism, courage under, 232, 233, 299, 300. 
gratitude for appreciation, 108, 179, 180, 244. 
works planned but not written, 179, 247. 



Index. 367 

Balzac, Honors de, — continued. 

"life was good beside him," 249, 250. 

George Sand, his opinion of, 254. 

personal appearance, 123, 125, 204-206, 255, 256, 322. 

the keystone of his work, 258-268. 

his early and unknown love, 268-271. 

Albert Savarus, 169, 270, 271. 

a characteristic of his nature, 271, 272. 

Madame de Berny, 273, 274. 

Mme. Hanska, letters to (1835 to 1838), 275-290. 

death of M. Hanski, 291. 

letters to Mine. Hanska (1843 to 1846), 295-317. 

first visit to the Ukraine, 317. 

returns to Paris in 1848, 321-323. 

goes again to the Ukraine, 324. 

letters to nieces and sister, 325-337- 

hopes deferred, and illness, 330-336. 

projects for dramatic work, 337, 338. 

marriage, 338-341. 

"at the summit of happiness," 340. 

the reprisals of gratitude, 340-342. 

death and burial, 344-349. 
Balzac, M. de, father, 6, 8-11, 22, 24, 25, 64. 
Balzac, Mme. de, mother, 6, 7, 12, 26, 40, 41, 96, 103, 339, 343. 
Barriere, M. Marcel, 153, 176. 
Belgiojoso, Priucesse, 282. 
Berlin, 295-297. 

Berny, Madame de, 125, 142, 144, 147, 273, 274. 
Buloz, 160, 161, 231-237. 

Cane Facino, 66, 67, 208, 278. 

Caricature, Le, 119. 

Carraud, Madame Zulma, 90, 125, 129, 134-146, 239, 274, 340,341. 

Carraud, Commandant, 90, 283. 

Castries, Duchesse de, 127-134. 

Catherine de Medicis, 82. 

Cesar Birotteau, 117, 314. 

Champfleury, 3, 115, 156, 157, 166, 321-324. 

Chouans, Les, 77, 79, 117. 

Chronique de Paris, 164, 165. 

Come'die Humaine, La, 82, 83, 85, 86, 196, 213. 

Contes Drolaliques, 97, 111. 

Contrat de Mariage, Le, 242. 



368 Index. 

Cooper Fenimore, 165, 184. 
Correspondence [see Letters], 2, 3. 
Dablin, M Theodore, 237-239. 
Dramatic Work, 166-170, 235, 337, 338. 
Dresden, 298, 299. 
Duchesse de Langeais, La, 129. 
Dumas, Alexandre, 300, 348. 

Enfant Maudit, L', 132, 278, 279. 
Episode sous la Terreur, Un, 86. 
Eugenie Graudet, 85, 143, 144, 249. 

Ferky, M. Gabriel, 4. 

Feuilleton des Journaux, 119. 

Fortune'e rue, 229, 322-324, 330, 331. 

Friends and acquaintance, 118, 125, 189-191, 218-223. 

Gautier, Theophile, 3, 149, 170, 175, 204-230, 270, 344, 345. 

Ga}', Madame Sophie, 118. 

Girardin, Emile de, 117, 119. 

Girardin, Mine. Emile de, 115, 123, 221-223. 

Gobseck, 85. 

Gozlan, Leon, 3, 153, 180-185. 

Grenadiere, La, 60. 

Hanska, Madame, ne'e Comtesse Rzewuska, 3, 127, 274-349. 
Hanski, Monsieur, 127. 281, 282, 286, 291. 
Holden, LL.D., Prof. Edward S., 4. 
Humboldt, Baron von, 297. 
Hugo, Victor, 155, 190, 345-349. 

James, Mr. Henry, 260. 

Jan, M. Laurent-, 336. 

Jardies, Les, 111, 146, 147, 224, 225, 289. 

Jesus-Christ en Flandres, 132. 

Kiev, 320. 

Lamartine, 123-125. 

La Touche, Henri de, 77, 121. 

Letters, 

to his sister Mme. Surville, 27-29, 31, 34-37, 42, 44, 77, 79, 91, 98, 

107, 108, 110, 234, 235, 241, 318, 319, 329, 330, 332-334, 336, 338, 

339. 



Index. 369 

Letters, — continued. 

to his mother, 96, 103, 339, 343. 

to the Duchesse d'Abrantes, 125, 126. 

to the Duchesse de Castries, 130, 133, 134. 

to Madame Carraud, 129, 130, 140, 142-147, 239, 340. 

to M. Charles Nodier, 190. 

to M. Theodore Dablin, 237, 238. 

to Madame Hanska, 275, 277, 279, 283, 285, 286, 288, 289, 295, 297, 
298, 301-307, 309-317. 

to his nieces, Miles. Surville, 325. 

to M. Laurent-Jan, 337. 
"Louise," 127. 

Louis Lambert, 16, 47-57, 91, 93-94, 96. 
Lovenjoul, le Vte. de Spoelberch de, 1, 4, 117. 
Lys dans la Vallee, Le, 134, 160, 161, 184-180, 231. 

Maitre, Cornelius, 86. 

Marcas, Z., 95, 180-184. 

Margonne, M. de, 90, 125, 234. 

Medecin de campagne, Le, 142, 143. 

Mery, 271. 

Mniszeck, Comte Georges, 293, 305. 

Mniszeck, Comtesse Anna, 302, 317, 327-328. 

Monographie de la Presse, 119, 233. 

Nacquart, Dr., 114, 304, 324-325. 
Nodier, Charles, 190, 191. 

Parents Pauvres, Les, 313. 
Parsons, George Frederic, 

Introduction to La Peau de Chagrin, 291. 

Introduction to Louis Lambert, 57. 

Introduction to Seraphita, 264. 
Peau de Chagrin, La. 93, 291. 
Petersburg, St., 291, 296. 
Physiologie du mariage, 131, 239, 267. 
Pons, Le cousin, 121, 314, 323. 

Preface to La Comedie Humaine, 85, 138, 139, 179, 180, 265, 266. 
Proscrits, Les, 86, 171, 172. 
Publishers and editors, 116, 117, 119, 120, 149-154. 

Revue de Parts, 120. 160, 161, 231-234. 
Revue Parisienne,165. 



370 Index. 

SachiS, 90. 

Sainte-Beuve, 165, 166, 376, 258, 259, 348. 

Sain'-Gothard, 287. 

Sand, CU , 3, 121, 122, 192-203. 

Sanson, 86, 87. 

Sardinia, 103-105, 146, 283-286. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 82, 86, 280. 

Se>aphita, 144, 179, 226, 261, 263-265. 

Silhouette, La, 119. 

Soulie, Frederic, 333. 

Surville, Madame, 2, 5-46, 70-112, 231-257, 318-320, 329, 339. 

Surville, Miles. S. and V., 325, 336. 

Taine, M. Henri, 121, 179, 186, 259, 260. 
Talleyrand, Duchesse de, 297. 
Tieck, 297. 

Vieille Fille, La, 288, 289. 

Wedmore, Mr. Frederick, 177. 
Werdet, Edmond, 4, 151, 152, 165. 
Wierzschovnia, 127, 318-321, 324-343. 

Works of art, etc., collection of, 121, 228-230, 294, 312, 313, 323, 335- 
336. 



LfcMg'20 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Feb. 2008 

PreservationTechnologiei 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATIO 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



.L'BRARY OF CONGRESS 



,0 020 419 776 3 1 



■■ 



